When I was a little kid, around 4 or 5 years old, I had a dream: I wanted to be in front of everybody else in the world. I know it sounds narcissistic (and in fact, it is) but let’s just set that aside and continue the story. When I was thinking about how I could make that dream a reality, I asked myself, “What does it mean to be in front of somebody?”. And I imagined a line of people. Quickly, I realized that to determine who is in front of a line, you need to know the direction in which the line is facing. Otherwise, you could arbitrary designate one end of the line as the “front” and the other as the “back”.

I immediately thought of a line around the world, but ran into another problem: Since the earth is round, a line around the world has no ends. So I needed to pick a point that will be the front of that line. Since the line is circular, the back would be the same point. But wait, can’t I just pick that point arbitrarily? Yes I can. By picking the outermost point on my body as that point and assuming that no two people can perfectly align, I realized that I am, in fact in front of everybody else.

Looking back, I still remember the joy I got after finding out that I was, in fact, in front of everybody else. That’s not to say my logic has no flaws, of course. For example the surface of the earth is two-dimensional, so a line around the world isn’t enough to include everybody. You can project people on a line, but that’s not the prettiest solution.