Let’s have some fun. I need your help to find Chattanooga’s biggest tightwad.

Years ago, I asked newspaper readers to nominate friends and family members for the title: Chattanooga’s Cheapest Person. The winner was a woman who hand-washed used, paper coffee filters in her kitchen sink and hung them up to dry. (There was an unsubstantiated report of a local man who separated two-ply toilet paper.)

Please e-mail your candidate for Chattanooga’s Cheapest Person to me at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com, or send a letter to me at P.O. Box 1447, Chattanooga, TN 37401.

In your note, please give examples of the most extreme ways your nominee has tried to save money. (Self-nominations are welcome.) Include your name and a daytime telephone number. The winner will get bragging rights and a Times Free Press T-shirt. Finalists will be revealed in a future column.

With frugality back in style after decades of conspicuous consumption, I think we can learn from those self-denying, penny-pinching, tight-fisted misers among us.

Tightwads love hard economic times because they validate our parsimonious impulses. I can say “our” because I feel myself turning into a skinflint.

Two examples:

I’m gaining a reputation for being rude to callers because we seem to be the only suburban family in North America without caller ID on our home phone. I think it costs about $2 extra a month on your phone bill, and most people (but not me) have decided this is not an extravagance.

I’ve never been able to recognize voices on the telephone. As a result, it’s often about two minutes into a conversation when I spring the awkward question: “And, who is this, please?” This question is particularly annoying to important people such as sisters and mothers-in-law.

The other thing is the Internet: My wife let slip at Sunday school one week that we have the slowest Internet connection on the whole World Wide Web.

“We still have dial-up,” she said sarcastically, turning her gaze to me.

To my amazement, the Sunday school class erupted into laughter. It was like: “Dial-up? Really? Stop it ... you’re killing us. And did you ride a mule to church?”

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Changing tracks, have you noticed the load of celebrities who are turning 50 this year?

Days after I was born in May 1958 along came baby Madonna, baby Prince and baby Michael Jackson.

I, for one, am not sure what to make of this curious trifecta. My friends and loved ones typically respond to this astonishing piece of personal trivia with some version of “Big whoop!”

There are about 4.2 million of us 1958ers out here. Among the celebrities born in 1958 are: Kevin Bacon, Drew Carey, Holly Hunter, Sharon Stone, Ellen DeGeneres, Annette Bening, Jeff Foxworthy, Alan Jackson and Ice-T.

Oh, and Barbie — the doll.

My favorite 1958ers, though, are my co-workers Clint Cooper and Anne Braly. Anne and I, incidentally, were born on the same day, May 30, 1958.

Mark Kennedy’s book, “Life Stories,” a collection of columns, is available at Amazon.com and at Wild Hare Books on Signal Mountain. E-mail him at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com.

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