My Newbie is Showing

The Value of a Second

Last Friday, the mail carrier for this office building is guided by angels for for sure. He was walking down the steps of the building next to ours to go back to his truck when to his right and slightly behind him he heard the crash and the vehicles were scrunched up against the brick wall where he had been walking. Literally 3 or 4 seconds earlier and he would have been smashed into the retaining wall or a few seconds later, he would have been the primary witness. As it is all he can tell the police is who had the green light and who probably had the red light.


Today, he told me how he first learned the value of seconds back in 1989. He heard a story about a woman who had been following a logging truck up several miles of roads and decided to pass him before the turn came up. Just as they were rounding the curve, and she was beside the truck, the chain snapped and hundreds of pounds of logs fell on her car. Seconds. A few seconds either way would have been the difference between being in front of the truck or camping out behind it while the mess got cleaned up.


How often is life like that? I no longer moan about being late or early. I am now thankful when the line at the store is moving slowly because I know that I am missing whatever it is that would have harmed me if the delays had not come up.