Go for coffee (get stimulated), take the hundred steps across a driveway into the bank (get money or leave some), slip sideways about ten steps to the courtesy mail station (to mail stuff), then go back home.
It was a great arrangement. Efficiency plus. No muss, no fuss. One stop with three results. And all with socializing adding its light touch—like coffee drinking friends always good for a warm welcome, a quick story, a good joke, a quick recap of any problem no matter where it was occurring, and a confidence building “see ya” upon leaving. Then came the one-handed greetings extended to the bank clerks as I made my way toward the mail station.
Standing there was Glen—pursuer of the good life (as defined by him), kids and grandkids, retired after a long career with the USPS, welcomed the chance to be around people, hadn’t lost his touch in knowing exactly how to get mail ready for a trip to anywhere.
Even on his own bad days, he was a dependable source of encouragement and enlightenment. As they say, he had, indeed, “been around the block” and as a faithful believer in Almighty God, was looking forward to the hereafter. Until then, however, he was trying to make the most of the rest of his stay on Mother Earth.
On that particular morning, I awoke and dutifully followed the all too familiar pattern of going outside to pick up the local newspaper. The headline gave me such a start that I hurried back through the dark gloom to the front door for a better look that mentally took the form of a bucket of cold water. The bank was going to be relocated two miles away. Their already sold old building was going to be torn down and replaced by a new pharmacy.
In one fell swoop my usual and long time weekday morning would be leaving and never coming back. Both banking and mail service was about to require a two-mile drive — but in opposite directions of each other. Far worse, it also meant the end of Glen.
After coffee, I entered the bank, gave it my usual visual sweep while realizing it was all about to become a pile of dusty rubble, and reached the mail station at the far end of the spacious lobby. Glen glanced up from some paperwork to say good morning and ask how I was doing. I told him I’d been okay until I saw the newspaper headline. He agreed, said it also caught him by surprise.
Wanting and needing some sympathy, I reviewed for him how great that three-part routine had worked for me, and that now it was about to come to an end.
With that, Glen came up to the window, lifted his arms, crossed them on the ledge, then rested his chin on them. “Fred,” he said in a quiet but determined voice, “it’s like this. If something is working really well for you, best you enjoy every bit of it while you can because at some point some SOB is going to come along and screw it all up.”
We both laughed. Three weeks later, we said our last goodbyes.
That was thirteen years ago. We rarely go to the pharmacy, it’s a pain to go the bank, and since the COVID pandemic, the coffee place isn’t nearly the gathering place it once was—and Glen, bless his heart, has passed on.
What endures, however, is what Glen told me that day. Increasingly, I find myself using it to rationalize similar happenings often enticingly billed as being “for my convenience” when I know that’s purposely said to ease my anticipated frustration. I must admit that helps, but I know it for what it really is—a back-handed way of labeling a new and disruptive change.
I share it here so you will also have a comeback, a way of explaining the unexpected, unreasonable, and illogical. In the madcap world in which we now find ourselves, I’m betting such an opportunity could come as soon as tomorrow morning.
If it does and somebody asks where you heard what you offer as an explanation, tell ‘em it came from Glen.
