The things that a backroom job does to your mind...

Days like this just leave me in awe of how many people there are in the world. Specifically, how many people there are in a big city like Minneapolis (which isn't even one of the most populous cities in the world, which boggles my mind even more).

People are buying patio furniture. A lot. At the Target store where I have my backroom job, if you just counted the number of people who came in for patio furniture and needed to have it pulled from the backroom for them-- heck, if you just counted the ones who did that during the hours I was on duty... I'm sure you'd get over a hundred so far this spring.

I can only imagine what number you'd get if you included people who bought patio furniture when I wasn't there, and people who bought patio furniture that didn't need to be pulled from the backroom, and people who bought patio furniture at other Target stores in the area, and people who bought it at other patio furniture retailers besides Target.

And yet this huge number of people is not even the majority of people in this city. I know this, because there are three situations when you buy patio furniture:

1. When you get a patio for the first time in your life, and have to buy your very first set of patio furniture. (Hasn't happened to me yet.)

2. When your old patio furniture breaks. (Also hasn't happened to me, of course.)

3. When you decide that your old patio furniture is so godawful ugly that getting new, better-looking patio furniture is worth a few hundred dollars to you. (Won't ever happen to me, but probably happens to many of the yuppies around here.)

I am willing to bet that, for the average person, quite a few years pass between these events. I doubt there are many people who buy a set of patio furniture every year, or even every two or three years. So, at any given time, the number of people currently buying patio furniture has got to be a pretty small fraction of the population.

And yet this small fraction of the population is huge. Patio sets just keep marching out the door, day after day, nonstop. I see them being bought, and I know I'm only seeing a small percentage of the ones that are being bought, and yet it seems like a staggering number to me. And not only is this staggering number only a small percentage of the patio sets being bought, but the mind-blowing number of people buying patio sets is only a small percentage of all the people in the city.

And this city is only a tiny, tiny percentage of the people in the world.

Some people look up at the stars to think about how gigantic the universe is and how small they are as individuals. I look at South Bali Gazebos and Parisienne Wrought Iron Chair and Table Sets.