While watching PBS’ American Experience last night, I was fascinated to hear that during the 1960s San Francisco hippie wave, famous Haight street featured its very own “free” store.  Young people, some little more than vagrants, poured into the area from around the country.  Want shoes, a shirt, heck, even a couch?  The “free” store offered all kinds of used stuff, which it rounded up from moving families no longer in need. 

In this day and age, nothing comes for free.  No, you’ve got to earn your money the hard way, bolting car doors into place, stocking dairy shelves, or serving up fourth-rate taco meat.

Of course, you could just punch in cell phone numbers really fast for $25,000.

That’s right, in the most obscure and useless competition to date, a 13 year old defeated legions of challengers to become the fastest text messenger in the United States.  Morgan Pozgar slammed engineering student “Cheeser” Nguyen and finally the boxing-robe-wearing West Coast Champion Eli Tirosh for the title.

Although all divulged their preparatory tactics (Tirosh rambled random Buddhist catch phrases beforehand), none could compare to Pozgar’s brutal physical training, with the teen allegedly texting her friends some 8,000 times a month.  That’s one message every 5 minutes and 30 seconds, leaving this writer stunned as to how Pozgar could still have friends.

While you might expect a true champion like this to spend her winnings on charity or measures amounting to world peace, she instead plans on spending most of it in a New York City shopping spree with her mother.

Oh, the true mark of a champion.

Note: Yes, I watched PBS last night, but I’d take a hippie documentary over “Dancing with the Stars” any day.