One morning last summer I was aboard the bus, on my way downtown. I happened to look across the aisle where my eye was caught by the unique reflection, the safety light from another passenger's electric wheelchair, reflected in the stainless steel baseboard of the bus interior.
Of course, I took a picture.
Not long after I took this photo, the hard drive on my PC took a death dive. It was only eighteen months old. I was good to it, I don't spend time on weird websites, so I don't know why it went kaput. At about the same time, my house phone died and my cellphone was taken over by viruses, making it unusable.
Slowly, I've been making my way back into my on-line world: I bought a new house phone so I could order a new cellphone. Its delivery was delayed a month due to the back-ups on the shipping docks. I imagined its slim black rectangle, swathed in pink bubblewrap inside a small brown box, inside a cardboard carton, stacked in a shipping crate shoved inside (possibly) a MAERSK container, which was stacked, among thousands of others on an immense container ship.
Somehow, it all works. Until it doesn't. We've all gotten so used to having anything we want dropped into our hands, that we don't take the time to appreciate the work it takes for us to have it. Whether it be a lacy bra, a pair of sneakers, a new car - or a life-saving medicine, somehow or another it's come to us through a series of workers we'll never see, but who deserve our thanks.
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Welcome back!
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