I’m in angst. That’s the only way I know how to describe it. Everything just feels so surreal right now. My wife and I have been together for the last 35 years. We married young and had our daughter around 10 years later. I still remember the day she had to be taken to the hospital. I was at work when her water broke, but instead of calling and demanding I get there as soon as possible, she told me that it was best I wait and that she was doing completely fine. I told her she was crazy if she thought I wasn’t gonna be there for the birth of my child, but she started screaming at me to stay where I was. I just chalked it up to birth hormones. I finished out the day, and as soon as I clocked out, I was flying to the hospital. It was a venture that proved fruitless, as when I arrived, my wife was nowhere to be found. And in the chaos of the busy hospital, my panic grew more and more until my pager started beeping. It was my wife’s number, and in a confused hurry, I found the nearest phon...
So I work as a mailman in Northern California. I work in an extremely affluent area(I’m middle class, I just deliver to the rich) and one of my customers was an older woman in her late 50s-early 60s who grew up in Soviet era Russia. She was a very kind woman and she’d always offer me drinks when it was hot. Anyways, I was speaking to her one day and I decided to ask her a question “what was one of the first big changes that you noticed when the Soviet Union collapsed?” And her response was very interesting. She said “I was finally able to buy my own clothes!” She explained that during the Soviet era, citizens were given clothing they were forced to wear and didn’t have a choice in the matter; once it collapsed, clothing stores started popping up and people could finally wear what they wanted. It makes you appreciate that things might be bad, but they can be much, much worse.