It was a day of highs and lows, but I really can’t complain, because the highs were high enough to offset the lows. Even the lows weren’t as low as they could have been. It was like having the ground fall away under you but landing on a downy pillow of non-allergenic goose feathers. The worst part is pondering what could have happened.

It could still happen, I suppose, but I choose not to believe that the goosy pillow will turn out to be infested with earwigs. It’s not as if I hadn’t thought of the possibility, having been earwigged aplenty under similar circumstances through the years. It makes you think, but it doesn’t have to make you embrace an unwarranted inevitability.

If you’re looking for specifics that don’t involve goose feathers and earwigs, it probably isn’t going to happen. That should tell you that it’s work-related, and I don’t go there any more. But I’ll say this: It’s nothing bad about my job itself, or the people I work with. That rickety old roller coaster is running on greasy wheels these days.

It has more to do with depending on the people we do our work for, depending on them to do the right thing and keep their promises and do all the things that people are supposed to do for each other, because if they don’t the whole fabric of society unravels. I always think of a four-way stop as the ultimate social contract. Everybody stops, and then we take turns moving forward, and everyone gets where they’re going. That system works pretty well, but it doesn’t take much to gum it up.