Anybody besides Austin and his obsessive search for pocket change have an OCD habit?
Here's mine: When my daughter was about 12, she had asthma and didn't like to exercise for that reason. But we knew from doctors she needed to. So I invented a game: We live near a woods, but walking in the other direction, you can get to the Washington Metro subway line in less than a mile. And over there, there are lots of upscale condo developments.
People come from all over the US to live in that area and to ride the subway to jobs in DC as bureaucrats or in state lawmakers' offices or whatever.
So the game I invented was looking for DIFFERENT state license plates: How many states could we find over a weekend? She kept notes on her phone. We'd walk through parking lots and down side streets glancing at license plates. We'd knock off a few mile walk, and she wouldn't realize she was exercising.
Anyway, we did it for years, my daughter got her exercise, and it became a compulsion with me. She's living in Texas now and teaching school but I still do it.
And over the weekend I spotted: 34 different state plates, also DC, the Choctaw Nation (they have their own Oklahoma Plate!) several Diplomatic plates (they do whatever they want and ignore all tickets and fines) and finally a plate from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
It's pretty amazing to me that people from states representing almost 70 percent of the country live within walking distance of my house. (I texted my daughter and she's determined that when she comes for a visit next we break that record!)
