I thought my high school days were over

I recorded a documentary earlier in the evening on CNBC about the history of Coca-Cola. Meanwhile, the American Music Awards were on. As Whitney Houston was trying to convince us all that she's not on drugs anymore (I ain't buying it), the following conversation happened:

Daniel: Can I either have the laptop or the remote?
Kimberly: (tosses me the remote)
Daniel: (Accessing the DVR to watch the Coca-Cola story) I'd rather learn something.
Kimberly: You're a dork! Do you need to go into the bedroom to get your glasses, too?

I was a pretty big nerd in through middle school and early high school. All those feeling came rushing back to me as the "cool kid" in the family had a laugh at my expense.

McChing

I drove by a McDonalds yesterday, and I saw the classic "Over 99 Billion Served" slogan on the sign. Obviously, this is an older sign, because McDonalds apparently announced their passing the "100 Billion" milestone on April 14th, 1994 (that's a fun little fact for you to keep). Since then, newer McDonalds have gone with the "Billions and Billions served" slogan (or no slogan at all) on their new signs.



Anyway...



This got me thinking. For the sake of argument, let's just use the 100 Billion number. Given that there are 6 billion people in the world, that would mean every man, woman, and child on earth would have to have gone to McDonalds an average of 16.67 times. Obviously, this average is actually higher, since it has been fifteen years since we passed the 100 Billion mark.



My thought process continued, and I wondered, how many times have I been to McDonalds? Well, we didn't really go to McDonalds a lot when I was a kid. To make things easier, I'll start when I was 16. I'm 30 now, so that makes 14 years.



How many times have I been to McDonald's in the last 14 years?



It's gotta be over 100 times. Surely more than 200. 1000? Have I been there 1000 times? That would be an average of 71.5 times a year...roughly once every 5 days. Well, I mean once every 5 days sounds like it could be accurate. There have been weeks when I've gone every day. There have been spells where I haven't gone for a month. I'd say it could be reasonable that it would balance out to once every five days.



This leads me to my next question...how much money have I spent on McDonalds in my life?



Some visits (breakfast, mainly) cost me only about $3.00. Others get up to about $7.50 A good ratio of breakfast to non-breakfast visits would be about 75 percent non-breakfast to 25% breakfast (this is 750 lunches and dinners, and 250 breakfasts for those keeping score at home)



Lets see....that's 750 x 7.50 - $5,625

PLUS

250 x 3.00 - $750

EQUALS

$6,375



Six thousand, three hundred seventy-five dollars I have spent on McDonalds.

I could have that Gibson Thunderbird bass I want, along with the Ampeg stack, with plenty of money left over.

I could have invested that money and it could be growing as we speak.

As my boss said, "You could have a hooker for a week"

But you know...I really like McDonalds.