Alone Again
I haven't laid eyes on another human being in nearly five days.
No, I'm not in solitary confinement or deep underground or even holed up in an apartment somewhere. My life is going on pretty much as always, and I'm outside a lot, and my house is little more than 100 feet from a road. The road, being gravel and in one of the less fashionable parts of a small, deeply rural county in Virginia, is very lightly traveled. Nevertheless I can easily see cars passing by now and then, and I suppose some of the drivers see me, especially if I'm in motion, but the distances and my vision are such that I can never make out even blobs inside the vehicles.
This isn't the first time that this has happened. Actually it's a regular thing, due to the frequent trips that my wife takes, to see her numerous relatives or on trips to foreign countries. And that is where she is now, in Florida to check up on her mother and stepfather.
I wonder what the statistics are on this kind of thing. I wonder how many people never go through even one day in their entire lives without seeing another person. I would guess that that is a huge percentage, and maybe I could flatter myself in thinking that out of the world's total of six billion-plus humans, in going for days without seeing even one of them I may be in a minority of less then a million!
Yet I am not lonely, for in many ways this is the way it has always been.
My mother liked to tell the story of how when my sister and I were small children, my sister contracted scarlet fever, and while she was in the house recovering from that highly serious malady, I sat on the front steps for long periods and happily told everybody who passed and who might have the slightest interest, that they couldn't come inside because my sister was sick.
Now, so many decades later, I have plenty of interesting things to do, indoors and out, and it's not a bad situation.
No, I'm not in solitary confinement or deep underground or even holed up in an apartment somewhere. My life is going on pretty much as always, and I'm outside a lot, and my house is little more than 100 feet from a road. The road, being gravel and in one of the less fashionable parts of a small, deeply rural county in Virginia, is very lightly traveled. Nevertheless I can easily see cars passing by now and then, and I suppose some of the drivers see me, especially if I'm in motion, but the distances and my vision are such that I can never make out even blobs inside the vehicles.
This isn't the first time that this has happened. Actually it's a regular thing, due to the frequent trips that my wife takes, to see her numerous relatives or on trips to foreign countries. And that is where she is now, in Florida to check up on her mother and stepfather.
I wonder what the statistics are on this kind of thing. I wonder how many people never go through even one day in their entire lives without seeing another person. I would guess that that is a huge percentage, and maybe I could flatter myself in thinking that out of the world's total of six billion-plus humans, in going for days without seeing even one of them I may be in a minority of less then a million!
Yet I am not lonely, for in many ways this is the way it has always been.
My mother liked to tell the story of how when my sister and I were small children, my sister contracted scarlet fever, and while she was in the house recovering from that highly serious malady, I sat on the front steps for long periods and happily told everybody who passed and who might have the slightest interest, that they couldn't come inside because my sister was sick.
Now, so many decades later, I have plenty of interesting things to do, indoors and out, and it's not a bad situation.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 8:42 PM
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