I had this irrational moment a while back where I said that I’d pay twenty dollars for a milkshake. I was having a particularly gloomy day, and I love milkshakes. Sometimes, when I feel like that, I tell myself that when I have real money, I’ll buy an restaurant quality milkshake machine, or whatever the technical term is, and life will be better. It’s a bit of a dream world, but I guess it gets me through the day.

Honestly, though, the fact that I love milkshakes has to confuse some people. I’ve been accused of hating fireworks, peanut butter, and puppies, so they think that I hate everything. The consummate Debbie Downer. I complain and criticize more often than I’d like, but I’m a little disappointed by this caricature of myself, even if some people find it endearing. It’s not that it is unfounded; I know that I’ve made plenty of disparaging remarks about fireworks and popular television shows and things that I don’t like, using stronger language than I actually feel. Maybe I do it to make my point more direct, or to play devil’s advocate, or to try to be funny, or have my opinion heard. These are all true to some degree. Sometimes I feel like it’s a façade and sometimes I feel like it’s just part of who I am. That it is by choice or by nature. I don’t know. I don’t know if anybody has this image of me in mind, but I’m endlessly curious to learn of others’ perception of me, and how it compares to my own.

The negative reputation is not one I’m proud of, so let me make it clear that I do in fact like peanut butter and love puppies. Fireworks I tolerate for the shared experience and congregation, and not for the sights or sounds.

In reality, that I have these irrational moments is a bit fictional. I’ll say that I’ll pay twenty dollars for a milkshake, but I won’t. As much as I almost always want one, I make a point of refusing to pay over 5 dollars for a milkshake. $5.25? I’ll pass.

This reluctance to pay marginal price increases is something that has never made sense to me. In college, we'd go to this place called 59 Diner at one or two in the morning. On the best days, we’d get this great stoned guy as our waiter, which everybody found awesome for reasons that I never really got. Anyway, there was a specific price breakdown for what I found acceptable to order. A burger and fries were maybe $7.29 and omelets were $7.89, and I couldn’t talk myself into buying an omelet, even if I wanted it more. Sixty cents! That's irrational. It’s embarrassing to admit, but it’s true. So when I say that I have these moments where I'd overspend on a milkshake, I'm lying.

Instead I'd sit there and think about other things I could buy with the 20 dollars, like four 5-dollar milkshakes. Actually, that’s the extent of what I think about because I don't think about buying things besides food. It’s all probably overcompensation for how I was spoiled as a child. My dad used to bribe me with Pokémon cards. Let that soak in – Pokémon cards. And it worked! I collected a stupid amount of stupid shit. I’ll refrain from elaborating, it’s that bad. Now I take what feels like a masochistic pleasure in not spending money and not having money spent on me. In saving sixty cents on a burger.

It actually frustrates my parents a little during the holiday season, even though their gift giving obligations ended a while ago. My dad, an Apple fanatic, asks me if I want a new computer, or a new iPhone, or what my opinions of them are, and I'm careful to not express a high enough level of interest in them, lest he be encouraged to buy me something. It's truly an upper class first world problem, and it bothers me to admit that, not because it isn’t true, but because I described it as if it was an actual problem. It feels as if I’m still that kid who has his parents pay for everything, so clearly saving a dollar of my own money and buying something cheaper will make up for the fact that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, as if I’m to blame for that, or that it’s something that needs to be addressed. That line of thinking is bullshit. As if ordering an omelet is an offensive display of opulence.

Having and expressing this opinion is in some ways mortifying. It makes me wonder what I do to make people like me or to make me feel better about myself. As a part-time self-aggrandizing narcissist, I want most people I meet to like me, or at least not hate me. Sometimes that part of me loses out to a combination of asshole-ishness and misanthropy, or the part of me that just doesn’t give a shit, so I’m not exactly consistent on these things, at least compared to my allergy to minor price differences. Walt Whitman wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” I really enjoy that line. It feels true, but it also appeals to the egotistical notion that I am complex and mysterious, or the honest truth that not even I know what I want.

I’m not entirely sure how lying about overpaying for a milkshake leads to me writing disparaging things about myself in attempt to humor you, but saying negative things about myself is an inevitability if you get me talking. I wish I could sort the truth from the rhetoric, but I don’t know if I can’t recognize it, or won’t. Maybe both.

Regarding my ridiculous train of thought, I like to believe that other people do the same mental gymnastics that I do, when faced with a milkshake craving. They don’t. My internal debates on these mundane things, like if and when I should shower or exercise or nap and the consequences that each action would have on the rest of my day might be a source of entertainment for some people, and I guess I can live with that. I’d rather be some mix of bothersome and amusing than be an asshole, but I’m probably all three, which isn’t really what you want to think of yourself, ideally. All of this is secondary, though, to my continual thirst for milkshakes. I don't know when I'll actually end up getting one, but you can bet that I won't be spending 20 bucks on it. Probably.