Growing up, the more knowledge I could pack into my head the better. I’ve always felt it is important to be ready to learn new things. In high school, I learned things that I would be able to use in college and maybe even later in life. Those types of things are required in order for me to benefit from college and life itself.

Some things that I will learn in life will not have a use in college. Unless I do a presentation about Texas, I won’t need to know it is illegal to graffiti someone’s cow. The first time I read that, I laughed a little too hard. The facts on Snapple caps make me smarter in a social sense. They are facts that I will remember because they are facts I am not forced to learn.

My junior year of high school, I remember sitting in the school hallway with a couple friends, drinking a Snapple. As I was getting up to throw it away, one of my friends yelled at me to stop. She told me that I couldn’t throw away the cap because there was a fact on it. I’d had Snapple before, but I never really payed any attention to the cap. I mean, who gets a drink and thinks, "Forget the drink, look at this cool cap"?

I don’t. Before I threw away the bottle, I took off the cap and looked to see if my friend was right or if she was just messing with me. Sure enough, she was right and there was a fact; real fact # 483: Smile more - every two thousand frowns creates one wrinkle. After reading that fact, I could already feel myself getting smarter. One little cap had the power to influence me to keep buying Snapple, and it had the power to make me smile.

Sometimes, when I've had a bad day, I remembered how much I didn’t want to be 16 with wrinkles and I thought back to that fact. That one little fact gave me the inspiration to share every fact I got with someone. No one wants wrinkles, and everyone just wants something to make them smile. My first Snapple cap made me smile, and now every day I look forward to making other people smile.

To this day, I save every cap I’ve had. Now, I am a little smarter after reading that it is illegal to run out of gas in Youngstown, Ohio. It is pointless information that always seems to stay in my head. In high school, I always had to take notes and memorize things for a test, but with those caps, all I have to do is take a drink.