The wonder of Google Maps →[More:] Looking at the rural area around my hometown on Google Maps, I realized tonight that I only lived about 5 miles from my 7th grade girlfriend. However, because we went to different elementary schools, a lack of maps that detailed our piddling roads, and a kid's inability to judge distances (tonight too, I learned my high school was only 2 miles away), I thought we lived much further apart, like about 15 miles.

Hell, when I was in the US Marine Corps I ran 3 miles in 22 minutes, and after my 9/11 layoff, I walked 10 miles a day when I lived in Maryland. In 7th grade however, my mother would had a cow if I had asked her to ride my bike such distances.

How different would things have been had I known just how close we really were?