Transitions

Today I put the lining back in my coat.

Yesterday wasn’t fun, but today was the first day this fall that I could see my breath. That still doesn’t feel right to me.

I remember what winter is like, but summer and winter make the world two different places. A bus stop at thirty below with ice underfoot is not the same stop in the summer. The bus comes at a different time and gets a different reception from the people waiting. It’s not the same.

I saw a flatbed truck go by, loaded with a k-car. It was towing a second behind it; they were twins except for colour. Is it cost effective anymore to have a k-car towed?

Students are back, filling the buses to standing room only. A girl got off; her hair was shipped directly from the seventies catalogue.

I guess if you’re that pretty you can get away with anything.

On the ride, I passed the McDonalds sign, the kind with the re-arrangeable lettering. I guess they couldn’t afford a decimal point; they were advertising $139 coffee. Maybe sales were down.

Underneath it was the slogan, “works for me”. I’d like to meet the fellow who would say that about McD’s coffee, priced reasonably or not.

But that’s a boom-time slogan. I remember when they brought that in. It’s when companies couldn’t find a new hire, couldn’t keep one. People traded up their jobs until all the minimum wage positions were stripped bare.

I remember looking at cashiers and wondering, “When did they start hiring 12 year olds?”

Well, you don’t hear much too talk about that anymore . But it wasn’t really all that long ago, so it will probably come round again.

Change is written into our lives at the lowest, most basic level. Try as we might to stop it, it just keeps going. Eating the same cereal every morning doesn’t stop the sun from burning down.