Sunday, October 26, 2008

6. 6 M&Ms. Ah Ah Ah Aaaahh.



This past Saturday evening, we had a Halloween Party at our church. It was pretty chaotic, though less so than last year's where they did a trunk or treat and just let the kids run free to raid the trunks. This year there were no trunks, so they just let the kids run free in the church to raid the treats. The best thing about the party were the contests that the adults could participate in. I'm talking about the "guess how many M&Ms are in the jar" contests, or, my specialty, "how much does the punkin weigh?".
Some of you know of my amazing super talent of being able to determine the weight of things pretty accurately simply by holding them in my hands. It's a power I acquired while working at UPS. For those who may not know, for 3 years I worked as a UPS package handler. I basically unloaded packages from 55 ft semi trailers onto a conveyor belt starting at 3:00 am. each day. 1200 per hour. Averaging 20 lbs a piece. That's 24000 lbs an hour. 96000 lbs per shift. 480000 lbs a week. 24,960,000 lbs a year. 74,880,000 lbs during my time there.

Whoah! I'm tired after all that! The math - not the package handling.

Anyway, Each package had it's weight clearly marked so I just started associating the feel of the weight with the number.

The only reason I'm bragging about this is because at the Halloween party, they had 3 punkins there for you to guess the weight of. I thought I would test to see if I still had the superpower or not. I guessed on all three punkins. I was actually pretty worried, because I wasn't super sure of the weights. I haven't worked at UPS for over a year now. There was a wide range of guesses from other people ranging from 20 lbs, to CJ's guess for each: 520. Not 520 lbs, just 520.

Just before they announced the winners, I confessed to my friend that I think I have completely lost my super power.

BUT IT DIDN'T!

They said I guessed all three right! They changed the rules and tossed out 2 of my guesses to let others win. That's OK by me, I wouldn't have been able to carry all 3 punkins home anyway.



As for the number of M&Ms in a jar? I never get close on those. Mia was probably closer. I asked her how many were in this jar. She immediatly answered "4". I asked if she thought there were really only 4, or if there were more. This time she thought about it for a bit and said nodding her head "I think 6. No, maybe 7. No, 6. 6." I entered that as her official guess.



She didn't win.

2 comments:

Andy Porter said...

Oh brother. You are already a celebrity, do you have to have super powers too?!? Save some coolness for the rest of us. I would have given Mia the M&M's. It may not be the most accurate, but it is definitely the cutest.

Kathy said...

Did you see your picture on the nicktoons website? There you were with Glen at the party, in the slideshow. And you can still guess weights. That is so cool! Love ya