Right and wrong in this world...

Sometimes there are things that go incredibly wrong in this world. For example, take my outing this afternoon to mail a simple letter to my wife.

First of all, traffic through town is horrendous enough as it already it is without having to wait for one car after another after another before you can even friggin' turn left! Not to mention multiple cars you have to wait on before you can even cross a stoplight or turn onto a single road! And how many police cars does it take to patrol one small stretch of road? Within five minutes it probably takes seven, because that's how many were out there between my house and the post office! Utterly ridiculous, if you ask me.

Second, there's the post office. It's bad enough that the post office rates to mail a simple piece of ordinary mail keeps going up and up and up. Forty-two cents right now, this time last year forty-one, and the year before that thirty-nine, and before then thirty-seven. My wife says, "Why don't they just raise it to a dollar and get it all over with?" She can't be closer to the truth, I tell you. Because to mail a simple, regular piece of mail cost - now get this - sixty-two cents! Damn post office clerk ripped me off over twenty lousy cents! For what reason? Makes no sense.

And then, as if that weren't enough, every time I come to the library to use one of the computers - and I've been so much to the library since returning to Mississippi, I'm on a recognizable first name face basis - that some punk kid who doesn't have bat brains to use the bathroom cards adults and old people! Why is that? Sometimes there isn't any justice in this world for regular ordinary people, you know?

Then again, sometimes things go right for a reason. Take this... between last Thursday and yesterday I managed to connect with two people, one by phone and one in Madison, who are helping me get back a lot of the "Star Trek" books and magazines that got thrown out a couple of years ago. Talk about a miracle! It'll take a while, but it should get nearly everything that I lost restored to me, with the exception of the DVDs, which will take time and money, like everything else. When that happens, I don't plan on letting any of it go once I've got it all back again. I'm taking out an insurance policy on my things in case of fire, flood damage, theft, or loss into the garbage.

And then there's this morning.

My wife calls me just to talk, and I hear my three-year-old daughter's voice on the phone. She tells me about her new Dora swimsuit Mommy got for her and about watching "Spongebob Squarepants" on one of the channels, and I tell my wife that my daughter doesn't need to be watching it because of some crude humor that she doesn't need to be listening to at this age.

Then I hear the three words that I've missed hearing from my wife for the longest time since my return... "I love you."

This now changes the entire picture as I know it in my life.

Maybe there's hope after all in this world.