There Should Be A Day Off

It’s still morning! I can totally think of something to blog about in ten minutes. I must say, I am overwhelmed by all the news. Yesterday in between all the real tasks of life I scrolled past outrage over various items of note among all kinds of people. There was the Christianity Today stuff. And the surrogacy stuff with what’s his name and his person. And then Ukraine, of course, and what else? All the controversy about that Red Panda movie. And like fifteen other things. And I didn’t even spend that many minutes on Twitter. So all that is very bad, but you know what really bothers me? The fact that Postal Workers have to work such long hours and the people who work at the DMV are allowed to wear leggings.

If you’re looking for something to be angry about–especially angry on behalf of other people–this perfectly fits the bill. It is a complaint about the degradation of our common life in two parts.

The First Part: The DMV

Our second child finally has a driving permit. It only took years because first there was covid and second I lost all the children’s Social Security Cards. And because of covid, I couldn’t get into the social security office to replace the cards, and I was extremely queazy about putting my driver’s license in an envelope and entrusting it to the Postal Service (see below), and so I just did nothing for a long while. But finally I was able to get into the Social Security Administration building for a brief moment and submit everything in person–a brief moment where the lights kept going out because they were motion sensored and there were not enough people in the room to make them stay on. Every time they went out the poor security guard would painfully stand up, wander out into the middle of the empty room, wave his arms until they came back on again, and then resume his seat. I felt like I was caught in the twilight, hem, zone, because seriously that’s what it was.

Anyway, I finally got the cards, but then the boy failed the online permit test–twice. And then he passed it. And then we went to our DMV appointment, but I hadn’t brought all the papers I had uploaded because I did not see the big banner at the top of the Website saying I had to bring them all, stupidly thinking that the two days it had taken to upload the documents meant that the DMV had them–they did not. My son and I were informed of this painful truth in a brusque and aggrieved and slightly belligerent tone by a youngish, masked, blond-haired lady in tight-fitting leggings and a big baggy t-shirt and a pair of tennis shoes. At first, I was confused and thought that someone in line had taken up the task of telling everyone else what to do, but I slowly grasped that she was actually an employee of the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Our local DMV shares space with the Bus Station–Gray Hound and Shortline busses rumble past, and the waiting area doorway for the busses is the same as for the DMV. Everyone–and this is Binghamton, if you know what I mean–looks pretty much the same here, so it’s not actually that big a deal. I was wearing ugly shoes and a gray sweater because when in Rome try not to stand out too much. But still, a deep, primal part of me was ticked off that if I was going to be yelled at by the government for getting it wrong, at least the government should be wearing faded and cheap business casual. And for true, two years ago, the government did wear that, but since covid, no one cares anymore.

The Second Part: No Days Off

And this is also my problem with the Postal Service. It’s not like we’re big on getting our mail delivered here in a timely way. If our packages go missing, we don’t complain because we know there’s no point. But how has it come to be that the people who deliver the mail have to work every day of the week? And why do they look so beleaguered, in jeans lugging along faded and breaking mailbags? And why do they have to deliver the mail long past five o’clock? These people, like the DMV, should have 9-5 jobs. They should be issued a comfortable but attractive uniform that demonstrates to the community that they are vested with the authority to deliver the mail. They shouldn’t look so exhausted. They shouldn’t have to work late hours.

I mean, most of our local mail delivery people are cheerful about their work. But when I meet them on Sundays, I curse the darkness as I smile and say hi. Look, if we want to get rid of Sunday as a national day of “rest” and make it Friday, or Saturday, or–when do Buddhists take a personal day? I don’t care about the day, but the whole nation should have one where we don’t do sports and we don’t receive mail.

Not having a day off and not having a nice uniform to indicate vested authority are just two of the small ways that you can know that everything is awful. Does this make me a “Christian Nationalist”? By no means. I said I don’t even care about the day anymore. But the furrowed and angry brow, the exhaustion, the late hours, the terrible clothes, these are all markers of how much everything sucks, and how some bad people are trying to divide us from each other. We don’t need to be divided in this way. We could have a common civic life where we gently and kindly disagreed with each other but still share something in common…like no mail on Sundays, I mean Wednesdays or Fridays or Whatever. I mean, I know we can’t have this, so register this is a Lament. That’s a big deal right now, isn’t it? I’m lamenting the death of nice things.

And now the morning really is over and so my blogging time is up.