Where does false value come from?

Sometimes we value things that aren't valuable at all. Here are six causes of our misassessment.

I took this one on a walk. The empty stick nest struck me as an appropriate visual for the concept of false value.

From my vantage point in the red pleather booth, I could see people passing by in the mall. “When is it going to get here?” I asked. Again. 

“Here it comes,” my mother said, tracing the movements of our server like a military commander scanning a radar screen. (It’s a lot of work taking children out to eat).

I knew my order by heart: “I want this (index finger pressed on the cheerful image of a scoop of ice cream with Reese’s Pieces for eyes and a chocolate dipped waffle cone for a hat) with cookie dough ice cream and extra Reese’s Pieces.”

After what seemed like an eternity, the server placed my Cone Head™ sundae on the table in front of me. I’d learned that they put some Reese’s Pieces in the hat and that they put a lot in the bottom of the silver sundae dish. Grabbing my spoon, I set to work eating my ice cream in a way that revealed the buried treasure underneath so I cou…