While leaving an overpriced body product store(ahem, Kiehl's) in an overpriced neighborhood(ahem, Lincoln Park) with my overpriced lip balm(Pause. Lip balm, folks, is a fancy word for chapstick. See, you can call it lip balm when you pay a price that doesn't involve a drug store. Paying this price for lip balm is something I tend to do because with winters this city can get and with single boy lips... well, I can get lip balm and not chapstick.) I was thinking how expensive it can get living in this city.

I mean, with rent and cabs and the variety of restaurants and then, of course, there's that 10% sales tax. You know, we get totally raped by this city with buying things because they add that extra 10% and all the sudden that expensive lip balm is actually even MORE because the city says so and as you're walking down the expensive streets of Chicago looking at your lip balm receipt and seeing how much they tacked on to that lip balm cost you start getting fired up. I mean, I did. I mean, lip balm. People. Should not cost the same as a nice lunch already, but add that extra percentage and it's like lunch and tip! I start thinking about how all the rich people don't even care about this and how all us people who want to be rich and aren't yet do worry about this stuff and I start thinking about money and how scary it can be and with the economy and... and... and... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And as I turn the corner in the quiet expensive neighborhood I say to myself: "What else will they start taxing!!!"

And then I quite literally at that moment stumbled upon this on the sidewalk:

An almost exact replica of a Monopoly game board spot.

In the game of life there are winners and losers and there are apparently randomly placed game board spots placed in the city to remind us... well, to remind us that we are just pawns(I'm the shoe!) in life and in order to win you have to have nice lip balm.