This past week has been a strange one for me. A series of disjointed events have run their course near me, and around me. They really bothered me, however I had a bit of trouble making any sense of these diverse, negative situations. That was until last Tuesday. There seemed to be a common thread running through my life.
It seemed as though people around me were doing things just for their own amusement and satisfaction. They cared not a whit for the world around them. It was as though life had been created solely for their amusement and enjoyment, and they were making the most of it.
It may just have been a run of bad luck, but I seem to have encountered a number of people who have operated in a particularly selfish, self-centered way. In one case it involved members of a fire department who disobeyed a directive from their fire district. In about five other cases it involved people I encountered who drove as though they were the only folks on the road. Or more correctly, they drove as though the highway had been created for their exclusive use.
As I was driving to a state training and education sub-committee meeting near our state capitol in Trenton, I was cut off by a number of people who made left turns out of the right lane and right turns out of the left lane. In every case, the person who was getting cut off was me. So why should I be surprised? I am, after all, a boy from New Jersey. I guess that it was the similarity of these acts of highway hi-jinks.
It took me about 30 minutes to put these thoughts together, but the thoughts did eventually gel. As I was motoring down the road, the words of an old George and Ira Gershwin tune came floating into my consciousness. The 1930 tune is entitled
