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Sawatdeeka’s Law
1.) When you go to bed an hour late, you will wake up ninety minutes before the alarm so you will have time to reflect on it.
2.) Family members will always walk in during the bedroom scene of an otherwise excellent movie.
3.) If you had a hard day, there will be several more unpleasant incidents before you retire for the night.
4.) When you finally get enough of a night’s rest to feel great the next day, you will be so buzzed with positive energy by evening that you won’t be able to fall asleep.
5.) When you join friends for a meal or other social event, there will be at least one awkward encounter you’ll be ruminating on during the drive home.
6.) Cats will always vomit on the area rug. Especially if you spent an hour the previous evening steam cleaning it.
7.) An otherwise silent phone will ring when you’ve just gotten deeply engrossed in your work, or better yet when you’re thirty seconds into another call.
8.) As soon as you put on your headphones to listen to a podcast, a family member will need something.
9.) The Internet will go out on the day of an important deadline.
10.) If you’re feeling especially confident during an outing or interaction, you will realize later that there was food on your face or something amiss about your outfit the whole time.
Published in Humor
or better yet just when You fall asleep after after You go to bed an hour late.
And any list of 10 items will inadvertently but inevitably omit #7.
Ha, ha–good one!
Whew– this made me check my counting again–I had reviewed it before publishing–and I am happy to see that I didn’t make that error. If I had, your comment would have had extra zing.
Your “real” post of the day will get far less interaction than your fun one. ;-)
Yeah. My whole point was to create a moment of minor panic — but JC jumped in with comment #1 as I was writing mine, which kind of ruined my joke since he referenced the number I chose at random.
(Incidentally, about 40% of people pick seven as the “random” number when asked to pick a number between one and ten. I knew that, and picked it anyway, undoubtedly for the reason so many do.)
So, if You knew I would pick number 7, then why did You reference number 7?
Now Henry, that was clever, even for you. (kidding) It worked! I hadn’t noticed the number JC was quoting from my post.
Yeah, I like the number 7. I don’t know why. I would probably pick it, too.
‘Cuz your pick wouldn’t be random.
If you need to be somewhere by a certain time, a driver will pull in front of you and do 40 mph in a 55 zone.
When I was about seven, I would stand in my dad’s office reading off a brown-tinged poster on his wall: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” I think it took me awhile to realize that it was intended as tongue-in-cheek. Anyway, the title and the content made an impression on me.
If I Like multiple items a week, or even per day, what do I say about posts like this?
Anyway, it is very good.
I couldn’t help myself.
Seriously, the phenomenon is real, though I just did some hunting about and the number I’m seeing now is 28% — more than twice as often as the next-favorite number (which is five — what are these people thinking?!). (I know I’ve seen other studies that run it up to 43%, but that might be among math students.) The speculation goes something like this:
People think that picking either 1 or 10 is too easy, too obvious. (About 2.5% choose one or the other of those.)
People don’t like to pick even numbers, they just don’t feel “random.”
Five is in the middle, very non-random seeming. (And yet the second most popular pick, so what does any of us really know?)
Three is too much a favorite number. Kind of obvious.
That leaves seven and nine. The thinking is that the primality of seven is appealing to people; even people who don’t really think in terms of prime numbers (and I hear there are such people) have a sense that seven is a bit exotic and hard to work with — good qualities in a number you’re choosing for absolutely no reason. And nine is right near the end, which again feels a bit obvious.
Anyway, whatever the motivation, the bias is real. Always bet on seven.
Yeah, well, Vegas has made a billion with Us believing that crap.
Pun intended?
Seriously, though, years ago at a party this dude got a piece of paper and a pen and began writing:
1 2 3 4 5 6 [unusual pause in the rhythm] 7 8 9 10
He handed Me the pen and said, “Circle a number.”
I circled 7.
He turned the paper over to show He had written 7 beforehand, as if He knew what I would pick.
I’ve have done this trick a few times to success since.
5, 6, and 8 are my life.
a) I see You omitted #7
b) the good thing about masks is that no one will ever tell You that You have food stuck in Yer teeth.
#CovidSilverLinings
My Dad had a rule, you can party as long as you wish at night, but we WILL get up as normal at 7:30 AM, and you WILL do what needs to be done.
I had some pretty horrible mornings, before I realized that getting in before 5:00 AM was the better decision…
#9 for sure.
Corollary:
Family members will always walk in during a real-life bedroom scene . . .
7.) An otherwise silent phone will ring when you’ve just gotten deeply engrossed in your work, or better yet when you’re thirty seconds into another call.
Back in the early 1980s I went to work for Merrill Lynch after spending 17 years teaching. During training I and my fellow trainees were assigned to the front desk and telephones after our receptionist went home. The phones would remain dead quiet for minutes at a time. Then suddenly all of the lines would light up and start ringing one after the other. My impression was that there was a bank of public phones somewhere with a group of pranksters who synchronized their efforts so that their calls would occur in such a manner as to make it total lunacy for substitute phone answerer. Then they would all hang up, wait a couple of minutes and repeat the exercise.
#6 can be avoided by not. having. cats.
You’re welcome.
Which brings us to Hank’s First Law of Encumberment:
“The only way to avoid having a cat is to say no to every kitten.”
Amen!
— Ogden Nash