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My Nickel’s Worth                                            by Randy Ooney

                                           “Up To”

 

“Up, two, three, four.”  I first learned this expression marching to a drill sergeant’s cadence in Fort Campbell, KY, some years ago.  I found it interesting that in the 1991 World Series, the outcome of game 6 was left “up to 34”, and he delivered.  So now, what am I up to?  Totally incensed by the blatant use and misuse of “up to” in advertising today.

 

You can get UP TO 20 times faster speed if you buy our internet service.

 

Lose UP TO 50 pounds when you buy our diet food.

 

Save UP TO 30% when you buy our car or truck.  What does this mean?  Could it be that the lime green pickup truck with a stick shift and no radio is 30% off, and the others are the same price.  Or maybe we’ve doubled all of our prices now so we can give big discounts.

 

So let’s write some ads for our local Pro Shop:

 

“Buy this new Megagongzilla III ball and you are guaranteed to average UP TO 300 in any center in the country”. 

 

“Try our polyurethane Super Slider spare ball and you will convert UP TO 10 spares every game.”

 

“Use Likepinetar special reactive sauce when cleaning your ball, and it will hook UP TO six more boards on every delivery”.

 

“With our Elbowmaster lock vice support you will feel UP TO 50% less pain while bowling”  (The problem with this is two fold.  First, how do you measure pain by percentage, and also, how do you know if there is less pain because of the brace, or the mouthful of Motrin you took an hour ago.)

 

“With our heavy duty Locktite wrist immobilizer you will get UP TO 80% more revs with every release.  And as a bonus, your ball will not feel heavy because the brace weighs 14 pounds.”

 

I’m just UP TO mischief.  Fortunately the bowling industry does not practice too much deception in their advertising.  I guess they discovered that bowlers are too smart to fall for it.  I’m going out to buy some of those super long golf balls to get UP TO 20% more distance, and then go UP TO the driving range to practice.

 

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