There’s this game I like to play in the background...

There’s this game I like to play in the background of my life wherein I travel from gas station to gas station in an attempt to find the longest possible receipt left behind at the pumps. This photo contains both my runner-up receipt and my current number one measuring 65 cm in length and featuring a whopping FOUR purchases made in a row without a single patron tearing off their receipt. I ASSURE YOU THAT THIS IS NOT PHOTOSHOPPED.

I’d invite you to join the competition, but I kind of want to be the best at something — anything, really — and there’s a pretty good argument to be made that I’m the only person in the world playing this game with any true sense of purpose. And not only is this game fun and vaguely civic-minded, it also keeps me humble; it’s not like this is something you could ever brag about winning (even though I am absolutely killing it). Even if I did try to brag to someone about it as we pull out of the gas station, a fresh 85 incher in my hand, there’s no way that conversation would ever end with the person in the passenger seat nodding with approval and gazing towards the distant sunset, a sly glint in their eye that seems to say “Oh, he’s got the lead for now, but the game is on.”

So that’s why I never bring it up. I keep it tucked under the mirror above the passenger seat without even a corner of it left “accidentally” hanging out. It’s a conversation I never want to have, if I can help it. I share this secret pastime only here. Nobody judges. Nobody makes fun. Nobody reads it.