I threw a couple of Topo Chicos in the fridge this morning in anticipation of this mid-December day being 84º. It’s been a few weeks since I had one because the weather has been cooling down, and it rained for a week straight.

I drank one of them with my lunch this afternoon, and damn, was it tasty. It was so good, it reminded me of a post I saw last week asking if you would drink only water for twenty years in exchange for some ridiculous amount of money. It was a no-brainer for me, hell yes, I would!

I quit drinking alcohol almost three years ago, and I stopped drinking soda fifteen years ago, so the thought of twenty years only drinking water seemed like a cinch. Until, that is, I tasted that Topo Chico this afternoon. Then, I started to wonder. Could I go twenty years without my morning cup of tea? Could I go twenty years without Topo Chicos and iced tea in the summertime?

A few weeks back, as Bonnie was leaving work, a fireworks display started at the shopping center across the street from her office. I did a search to find out why and discovered it was the 30th tree lighting ceremony. That made me feel old because I remember when that shopping center was built when I was in high school.

Last summer, however, I had some kid in my bathroom giving me an estimate to close up the hole in the wall and floor from my insurance company leaving me in the lurch. He said it would be $8,000, and when I informed him that I didn’t have $8,000, he told me that he could redo the whole bathroom for $30,000. Sure! Why the hell not? As long as we’re spending money I don’t have, let’s go all out!

I told him I didn’t want to redo the whole bathroom because there was nothing wrong with the tile. “It’s only 24 years old,” I reasoned. “Only?!” He exclaimed. I doubt he was even 24 years old yet, so that seemed like a very big number to him. “Most people remodel their bathroom every 10 to 15 years,” he continued, smugly.” “To keep up with trends,” I retorted, “not because anything is wrong with the tile.”

It seemed strange to me that I feel like 30 years is a lifetime ago, but 24 years seems like only weeks ago. I thought about why that would be, and I came to the conclusion that it’s because my oldest kid is 23 years old. Anything in his lifetime seems recent to me, but beyond that, memories start to get fuzzy and time begins to stretch beyond the horizon.

All that is to say, that for the right sum of money, twenty years of drinking only water would be a breeze.