Oh, Pretty Numbers...

Every now and again I am reminded that, mentally, I am basically still just a giant child. Stupid little things that should never seem very important happen and when they do, rather than simply looking at them, mentally processing their existence and moving on, I instead immediately revert back to giggling at them like an idiot. For example, on Friday morning I was driving down the highway when my truck's odometer went over 100,000 miles. Now, this is at least the third time that I have been behind the wheel of a vehicle when this milestone has occurred and therefore it isn't anything I haven't seen before. In fact, I would contend that two of the other times were even more impressive because in those instances the odometer didn't have enough room for the 1, and as such the dial was simply back at to all zeroes (letting me know what it would feel like to own a brand-new car). So, really, I shouldn't have been that in awe of reaching 100,000 miles. Still, when I saw all those zeroes I was struck with the urge to pull over and take a picture of my odometer for posterity and if I hadn't been in the middle of an on-ramp I may have acted on that urge.

By the afternoon I was over the occasion of hitting 100,000 miles and silently scolding myself for getting so excited about something so silly. First off, it's not like I did anything to contribute. I didn't walk all those mile or anything. Hell, I didn't even put all of them on my truck; there were already 80,000 miles on the car when I bought it. (And, given the shady nature of the place I bought it from, there is a better than 20% chance my truck actually went over 100,000 miles a while ago.) Plus with the way vehicles are put together these days, unless it is involved in an accident every car should be able to easily make it to 100,000 miles, if not 200,000. It is not that big of a deal, is my point. I vowed that this would be the last time I got so excited over something so unbelievably trivial to the grand scheme of things. This vow lasted right up until that very same evening when I stopped to get gas and noticed that my mileage was now exactly 100,100, at which point my brain had the exact same reaction as earlier in the day: "Oh, look it all the zeroes!" Told you - giant child.

-Another recent time when it was abundantly obvious how immature I still am was earlier in the week when I went food shopping. I've always felt that you can learn a lot about a person by the kind of groceries they have in their cart. For example, if they have a ton of health food in there then I know that we are never going to hang out. Anyway, I was shopping strictly for myself and just needed three days worth of stuff to make it through my mini-getaway, so on my list I was buying meal-to-meal, not with any kind of long-term thinking. Also, there was no one else there to check my buying habits. At one point I looked down and surveyed the cart's contents: soda, Gatorade, candy, Apple Jacks cereal and pasta. Not a fruit or vegetable to be found. Now, in my defense I was on somewhat of a vacation and no one eats very healthy on a vacation. But, still you would think that I could shoehorn at least one healthy snack in there somewhere. If only apples came with a prize...