How Am I Doing?

No, really. How am I doing? I have no idea.

I ask this because, in honor of the holiday season and the daytime getting longer by something like four seconds a day, I'm drinking a cup of hot green tea. I know, I'm a wuss and am in danger of having my testicles revoked, but that's not the point. I mean, it's not like I've gone completely to the darkside and have started a love affair with cats.

This tea, which I bought because it was on sale and would, I figured, makes a completely tasteless ice tea, and also works pretty good as hot drink in cold weather (not that I'd know anything about that). It also makes me feel refined because if there's one thing I know about Joe Six-Pack, it's that he doesn't drink green tea.

Hot or cold.

In addition to warming up my body's core, according to what's written on the box, this tea also removes free radicals and helps as an anti-oxidant, although I think those are two ways of saying the same thing. I don't have a problem with that, but I'd like some numbers.

I don't ask for that to gauge the effectiveness of this particular tea over its competitors or against other products, it's only that I have absolutely no idea how many free radicals I have running around in my system. Or, how much anti-oxidizing I may need. I suspect it's a lot, but the thing is I don't know if this tea eliminates two free radicals, the limit for advertising the plural, or millions.

And, without having a good idea about how many I have, a trillion removed may either flush my body entirely (for the moment) or barely make a dent in their vast army.

I suppose I could take some level of solace in knowing that, after drinking the tea, I have fewer than when I started, or in the simple argument that any reduction at all is a good thing, but I need to know how good I should feel. If this delightful tea lives up to its claims and is capturing those wily free radicals even as I type, and I'm not doubting it does, I'd just like to know how many. If I knew that, I could figure out how much of this I need to drink to remove them all, or if that's just a pipe dream.

Any reduction may be better than none, but until I know just how much improvement this tea is giving me, I think I'd be a fool to act all happy about it.