Butt Call

   My phone rang this morning. I was still half asleep, and pretty hungover, so I didn't get up to see who was calling. I just let it ring.

   It was my girlfriend. Well, it was my girlfriend's phone, but she didn't mean to call. She was at work, and the phone was in her pocket. The sequence of numbers necessary to call my phone happened to be accidentally pushed. And I got a voice-mail filled with random tidbits of conversation and lots of background noise.

  She is a waitress. I heard a guy asking her about a side of fries. Mundane stuff. But it struck me. Hearing a piece of her life. A piece that has nothing to do with me. I thought about her. I thought about her as an individual person, with thoughts that are only her own. The center of her own personal universe. Trying to navigate her way through the world. It was endearing.

   Her name is Abby. And she wakes up every day, with her own myriad thoughts and questions and conflicts.  This happens billions of times per day in this amazing and beautiful world.