Whether you work for a Chicago SEO company and have to analyze marketing data all day, crunch numbers as an accountant, edit pages and pages of manuscripts, or whatever job you work, you probably have to sit at a desk all day long in front of a computer.  It’s a common task of all white collar jobs.  Not only do you have to discipline yourself to sit still for after hour after hour after hour you have to keep your mind occupied.  It’s like driving for long stretches of road for too long.  You can get hypnotized easily.  You need some type of occasionally distraction.  Also, you need to get up and move around every once in a while, if only to stretch or walk to the bathroom.  It is also vitally important that you stay hydrated.  If you work and work and work, it can become really easy to forget to have something to drink.  You can also forget to go and have lunch.  A lot of people will work right through their lunch break and they shouldn’t.  Everyone needs some kind of break from it all every single day so they don’t forget there’s more to life than just endless tedium. 

My mother has worked as a nurse for around 30 years now.  She’s not the type of nurse that you imagine when hearing the word that makes rounds in a hospital.  She’s a nurse that takes care of the elderly, sometimes referred to as a caregiver.  For years, she worked at a number of senior living communities.  One year when I was really young, I had to go do community service for some inane, random school project so I just went with my mom to her job for a night.  It was easily one of the most horrifying experiences I’ve ever had.  There’s nothing like walking around 3 floors and seeing elderly people lying helpless and dying in bed after bed.  They have tubes attached to them and all these wires and some of them were really difficult to look at.  Their faces were like thin masks hanging over their skulls.  It was worse when I watched a few get sponge baths and had to look at all their liver spots and wrinkles and stretch marks.  I didn’t really do much work there.  I just sat with a few of the elderly and they told me about visiting India or their wives or what was on TV, though their eyes glazed over and they’d just stare off. 

One of the scariest injuries I have ever seen was when I was in high school. I was playing football at the time, and we were in the state playoffs. Our quarterback at the time, John Harris, was a college prospect. Early in the second half, Harris launched up a ball to his favorite target and best friend, Shawn Benson. Benson went up for the ball and landed awkwardly. He went down and did not move. Fearing a neck injury, the trainers did not move him. They used cut tools to get his jersey and helmet off, as they awaited the ambulance. It was a really scary moment. You could even see tears welling up in our usually stoic coach. Nobody knew what was happening, but we all assumed the worst. Luckily it was not as bad as it looked. He was in a neck brace for a while after the game, but fortunately he got away without any permanent damage. We ended up losing the game, despite the fact that we were leading at the half. Harris just could not recover from seeing his best friend go down like that. Luckily he landed on his feet, as he was a college baseball player and is now in the Houston Astros minor league system.   

Jack and Maria decided to go ahead.  One morning I got a call.  They were in Merrillville filing bankruptcy.   I was very sad about this.  I had talked with them at length, and went over what John Winston had advised me, and they were not going to go this route.  Why, I don't know.  They had expanded their business at a rapid clip by buying some competitors.  The competitors business was not all it was supposed to be.  One business had cooked the books, and the money that was supposed to be there was not.  They were suckered.  Jack and Maria had hired a lawyer, John Winston, who tried to save them, but they didn't seem to be interested.  I went to visit Jack and Maria one week later and they didn't show up at the restaurant.  I went to their house, and it was dark.  Their business never reopened.  Later, some of their creditors showed up in town looking for them.  They owed them money big time.  In fact, Jack and Maria owned everybody money.  The sheriff got involved, and eventually we all found out that Jack and Maria had been stealing money from their own business.  They had disappeared.

I had someone knocking on my door last evening, and wondered which neighbor needed to borrow some tea or some lunch bags, or maybe I was getting my vacuum cleaner back.  But it was Charlie, one of the nephews of my neighbor Emily.  He is the helpful one and very polite.  He looked his old charming self, but something was different about him.  When he reached up to scratch his head, I saw it…he did not have on his favorite thing in the world; that Los Angeles Lakers cap his Dad gave him.  He told me why he was visiting so late.  He was on a mission to find his cap.  He couldn’t remember what happened to it.  Since he always wears that cap, I know he was puzzled about what he did with it.  He reminisced about his day, all the places he had gone and could think of no place where he would have taken off his cap, except either here in my place or at his Auntie’s place.  Since he did come over and helped me rearrange the cans in my walk-in pantry, that where I sent him, and where he found the cap on top of the canned tomatoes.