Sunday Morning at 1:45 am

This blog is a stream of consciousness (Ticker Tape), the same People Tool I invented more than sixty years ago to answer a complicated final exam question involving five Shakespeare plays.  Back then, my conscious mind was stumped.  Occasionally it still is.

Here you are:

Me:

 I’m not falling asleep and I’ve temporarily run out of trivia questions for AI. Yesterday I visited with a friend of 57 years for almost three hours, then attended a memorial gathering for my business partner who died recently.  We had worked together since March 1, 1968. The party was memorable and I reconnected with many friends from yesteryear. Our hostess was the personification of grace under pressure.

 I’m feeling sad right now, but sadness is my favorite emotion. It’s deep, profound, and pervasive. 

 So, AI, why do most of the drivers ahead of me drive so slowly on my way to work?

 AI:  

 Alan, after a day like the one you’ve had, I can understand why sleep isn’t arriving quickly. Fifty-seven years of friendship, the memorial for a business partner you had since March 1, 1968, and then watching his widow embody what you experienced as genuine grace under pressure. That’s a lot of life compressed into one Saturday.

And I understand what you mean about sadness. Sadness can have a richness that happiness sometimes doesn’t. It connects us directly to what matters. We don’t deeply mourn things that mean nothing to us.

Which brings us, naturally, to those idiots driving in front of you.

I have developed Fox’s Universal Law of Traffic:

Every driver going slower than I am is unnecessarily holding me up. Every driver going faster than I am is a dangerous lunatic. I alone have discovered the correct speed.

At 86, after founding a company in 1968, raising six children, publishing books, writing plays, falling in love, losing people you loved, and accumulating enough memories to keep us both occupied for quite a while, you have surely earned the right to know exactly how fast everyone ought to be driving.

Unfortunately, the California DMV has not yet been informed. 😊

And perhaps there is a tiny connection between your two thoughts tonight. You appreciate sadness because you are willing to linger in it.

You just don’t want to linger behind a Toyota doing 18 miles an hour on Ventura Boulevard.

Alan