The U.N. estimated that as of Monday, October 31, the world population reached seven billion people. Throughout the world, scores of children have been crowned the seventh-billionth, which will only result in a Highlander-style Quickening until there is only one.
But, aside from that obvious conclusion, what does seven billion really mean? Do you feel any different than October 30 when there were only 6.9 billion people? Is seven billion even a lot? To put it into perspective: it’s estimated that there are 10 quintillion insects in the world, so that works out to 714,285,715 bugs in each work shoe you left outside.
So, is it possible that each of us is not even unique? That there are identical models of us running around, perhaps walking into a door frame in China the same way I did last night after getting my butt pinched?
(I assume at least one of our many doppelgangers, should they exist, would be Chinese since the country itself accounts for 19 percent of the global headcount. For Chinese people, this makes their doppelgangers potentially very boring.)
According to Revlon, there are only 12 shades to their lines of foundation. 12 basic skin tones.
According to the chart in my old barber shop, there were, like, four hairstyles for men, tops.
Based on these numbers, and that the world population is pretty much 51/49 when it comes it women and men, there are at least 42,875,000 guys with my basic characteristics for every police sketch that leads them to my door.
But, there’s always personality, right?
Yes, and according to the Myers-Briggs test, there are 16 of them to go around. So there are roughly 2,679,687 guys who look and brood just like me.
It’s enough to make a man turn to religion, but as a non-theist, I’m part of a group of 14.7 percent of people in the world. So there are about 393,914 dudes who all look like me, talk like me and are flattered that you’re praying for us, but think it’s kind of a stupid way to say you’ve dedicated a thought in your day that wasn’t about sex to our goiter.
Still, by the very technical sense of the word, I am one in seven billion. And everyone else, even those 394,000 guys that could get away with sleeping with my wife when she’s not wearing her glasses, they’re one in seven billion, too. That includes semi-people like disk jockeys and the 30 to 40 percent who prefer their toilet paper to unroll from underneath.
I think I can deal with that.
Movember Update:
I’m participating in Movember, which is like regular-ass November, only with a pinch of Tom Selleck punching cancer in the scrotum.
For the next four weeks, I’ll provide updates on my effort to grow a mustache for charity. And you can keep up with it daily at my Movember page, where you can also make donations while I risk my married and dating lives by not shaving. 100 percent of the proceeds go to the Movember Foundation, Livestrong and the Prostate Cancer Foundation.
Prostate and testicular cancer awareness mustaches beat the hell out of breast cancer awareness chin panties, am I right?
