If you separated my skin from my body and spread it out on the floor, its total surface area would cover a lot of space.
Specifically, it would cover 19.4 square feet of floor, or something like 2,790 square inches.
I think it's fair to say that one could fit 32 large pimples onto one square inch of skin. I therefore have 89,280 possible pimple locations on my body.
Some of these locations are better pimple locations than others.
Why then, did my large pimple-to-be, presented with these 89,280 possible locations, ignore the 89,279 more acceptable locations and choose to implant itself in the one pimple location I dread the most?
These thoughts occurred to me this morning as I beheld the wonder of a large pimple protruding from the tip of my nose. I mused some more on the situation throughout the day as supposed friends, family and colleagues helpfully and repeatedly pointed out my resemblance variously to Bozo the Clown and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Shutting my office door didn't help; the pimple's front-and-center location meant it loomed large in my line of sight as I tried to distract myself with work.
The odds of a large pimple appearing on the tip of my nose are actually much more unlikely than 1 in 89,280. At most, I get two large pimples per year, so the real odds of a large pimple appearing on the tip of my nose on any given day in any given year are more like 1 in 16,070,400. It's estimated that the odds of being struck by lightning on any given day in any given year are 1 in 87,600,000. This means, in any given year, I'm five times more likely to get one large pimple on the tip of my nose than I am to get struck by lightning.
I suppose that should make me feel better, but for some reason, it doesn't.
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