2 + 2 = ???

A few Saturdays ago, my roomies Jables and Rosey decided to start drinking Bloody Marys around noon. By the time I got home from the Cardinal game, they were well on their way. I walked into a rousing round of The Family Guy drinking game. And thank God, I wasn't too late to hear Rosey deliver dramatic readings from our book of "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey."

Sidenote: If there were two guys name Flippy and Hambone, who would you think liked dolphins more?

My roomies intoxicatingly posed a very serious question: If you do a 'number two' twice in the same bar, does that equal a foursie? No one was quite sure of the answer.

A few days later, Rosey received a shipment from Japan. The box included an assortment of philosophy books from his undergrad days. I was attracted to a book on existentialism. I flipped through and saw that "Notes from Underground" by Fyodor Dostoevsky was included. I thought I'd show off my brilliance by talking about the 'most advantageous advantage' explained in the text. Rosey remembered this passage as well, so we sat downstairs in his basement bedroom talking shop for another thirty minutes and pretending to be very intellectual.

* * *

Now, much later, I still ponder the drunken question my roommates asked me on their drunken Saturday afternoon. In Dostoevsky's classic novella, the main character, The Underground Man, claims that humankind's 'most advantageous advantage' is its ability to use emotion to defy reason. We are the only species on the planet with the necessary higher order thinking skills to act in direct opposition to science, math, and plain old common sense. The Underground Man emphatically claims that 2 + 2 = 5, just because he can.

Therefore, to answer Jables' and Rosey's question: Two poops in a single location can equal a foursie. But it can also equal a fivesie if you want it to. That's your 'most advantageous advantage.' Enjoy.