I'm not exactly what you would call a religious person."" For instance, I believe anyone who tells me they hear God speaking to them needs to see a psychiatrist, not a priest. But sometimes, whether you believe in a higher power or not, it sure feels as if the universe is trying to send you a message.
The most recent communiqué between the universe and myself occurred when I was feeling peckish and decided to go to the store.
My trouble started when I left to get my car. Wisconsin's lovely winter weather (motto: The snowmen build themselves!) had turned my car into an ice sculpture and the eaves of my house were host to parasitic icicles waiting to fall and pierce my skull.
I persevered, however, and after a complicated excavation, my car was warm and ready to go.
The roads were sluggish. The snow turned normally swift traffic into a molasses-like ooze and pedestrians flowed between cars like some perverted game of Frogger.
Finally, I made it to Copps. Unfortunately, it appeared that the reason for the traffic was simultaneous hunger experienced by all of my fellow students, as I was forced to roam the parking lot for 10 minutes before finding a space somewhere near Peoria. As I trudged towards the store, however, my thoughts were only on the joys of food ahead of me.
I walked the aisles, collecting foodstuffs for the upcoming weeks. Just as I was debating between Chocolate Chunk Chewy Granola Bars (Now with 10 percent less sugar!) and Chewy Granola Chocolate Chip Bars (Now with 10 percent more chocolate!), the air was filled with a piercing siren.
Yes, that's right, the fire alarm was going off. Strobe lights turned Copps into a rave. And, following years of training in grade school, every single person in the store did exactly what we should have: nothing. Everyone went about their business. Wishing to conform, I dutifully chose the Chocolate Chip Bars and kept shopping.
Finally, a voice rang out from above. ""Attention Copps shoppers: We have determined that this is not a false alarm. We need to evacuate the store. Please leave your carts where they are.""
And so back into the cold we went, cursing the store and whoever started a fire. The first couple minutes were rather philosophical.
Now, I'm trained as an economist and economists are primarily concerned with optimization. On the surface, this looks like a simple problem. If I believed it would take more time for me to go across the street to Sentry and start over than to wait outside and finish, then I should stay.
Of course, there are psychological variables to take into consideration as well. How long does it take for the biting cold to turn a warm human being into a meat popsicle? How bad do I feel for my abandoned cart? What if Sentry only has Chocolate Chunk bars?
The economist in me started calculating utility integrals and graphing the supply and demand of granola.
Luckily I, being male, come with a standard override. When it gets too cold, certain temperature-sensitive organs send a series of high priority nerve signals that trigger an instinctive and overriding response. While the nuances of the signal are difficult to reproduce in linguistic terms, the message is clear: ""Your balls have retracted. You will lose the ability to perpetuate the species in 3.7 minutes.""
I could not find another member of the species to assist me in the ancient warming ritual so I was forced to go to the next best option: Sentry.
As I filled a new cart with edible goods, I replayed the evening's events and had a revelation: the universe was trying to send me a simple message. I was eating too much.
This time around, I grabbed the Less Sugar More Granola Chocolate Chunk Bars and everything was all right.
Keaton spent several minutes trying to work a nipple joke into this column, only to decide it was tasteless and offensive. E-mail him at keatonmiller@wisc.edu.
