054/365 10/14/2025

“Here’s something for ya.” He leaned in close across the table. He had pretty good eyes and an easy smile. His hands were smallish, but he moved them precisely. Adjusting his fork just so and passing the salt and pepper shakers together. “The human mind necessitates a certain amount of memorized alphanumeric characters. Like now, we got all our passwords and PIN numbers—but it should be just PINs, since it stands for Personal Identification Number and who would say Personal Identification Number number?” He let out a soft chuckle. “But now we have all those. And before, people memorized phone numbers! You’d have a whole contacts list in your head. And then before that it was distances and weights and measures because people cared about all those things, and before that you’d have to make sure you kept count of all your seeds and sheep and water barrels and your neighbors’ and everything you’d need to be alive. That’s why it’s such a panic when you can’t remember one of those things. Because we’re evolutionarily predisposed to need them. For survival.” He sat back and smiled like he was sure he’d opened up heaven itself and bestowed me with god’s own wisdom. 

It was our second date.