Nancy Asking For 2 Dollars / I'd Like To Borrow X

About

Nancy Asking For 2 Dollars, also known as I'd Like To Borrow X, is an exploitable four-panel comic strip meme that uses edited versions of the 1972 comic Nancy by Ernie Bushmiller to create modern references and twists to the titular Nancy asking a banker for a loan of "two dollars," typically to see something. The meme format also uses the phrasal template "I'd like to borrow X" with various things replacing Nancy's original request.

Origin

Ernie Bushmiller created the comic on June 23rd, 1972, and did not attribute a name to it. In the four-panel comic, Nancy is seen walking into a bank with a sign on it saying to visit the loan department. After walking in, she asks the banker if she can borrow two dollars, which, according to inflationcalculator,^[1] would equal $14.18 dollars. When asked why, Nancy answers that the circus is in town, and the last panel shows Nancy and the banker at the circus enjoying ice cream while a clown is performing.

The original source for the comic has been lost to time, but it was uploaded to the Tumblr page Weekend-ers^[2] on October 31st, 2013, where it was seen as an example of a wholesome meme (shown below).

Spread

The comic received several different types of meme divergence in the following years. For example, on November 2nd, 2016, the Tumblr user dualdestinies^[3] uploaded a version of the meme that, instead of a clown in the last panel, featured Loss, calling it entertaining like a clown at the circus (shown below).

On November 14th, 2019, the Redditor NuclearReactionary^[4] uploaded a series of back-and-forth images between the comic and Slavoj Žižek, with him breaking down the comic to its core as he sees it, being anti-capitalist, earning over 700 upvotes in three years (shown below).

On July 27th, 2022, the Twitter account @NotYakra^[5] uploaded a version of the meme in which the department at the bank is no longer the loan department but was changed to the Amontillado department, as part of a shift in the meme from being about asking for two dollars but instead having Nancy seeking various different things depending on how the sign outside was changed (shown below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References