Rant #2,574: Gotta Serve Somebody

How was your Martin Luther King Jr. Day?
 
How did you participate in the “day of service?”
 
What did you do to commemorate the memory of the slain civil rights leader?
 
For me, my day of service amounted to one action: I served my mother, who still does not have a vaccination appointment, by going with her to the supermarket and helping her do her food shopping.
 
Other than that, my day of service was basically spent in my house on my bed, watching the New York Knicks game.
 
I deserved the break.
 
I have been trying, day and night, to get my mom a vaccination appointment to no avail.
 
I tried to do that yesterday, too, but it didn’t work, so I earned my service time and I also earned my right to take the day off from this nonsense, even though I didn’t take the day off fully.
 
It is like playing Bingo. You just have to get the right numbers in a row to win the prize, and I simply haven’t been able to do that yet.
 
So I did my service to my mother, and today my service continues in that regard, and in other ways.
 
I have to serve my son, who I take back and forth to work, and I have to make his lunch for his work week.
 
I have to serve my wife, who, while away at work, expects me to do the laundry, which I will do—it is already percolating in the dryer as we speak.
 
I also have to help her in the preparation of dinner, as she works a bit late and my son and I eat a little before she gets home.
 
So I guess I pay my service dues today, and week after week.
 
I really don’t mind. I am home, and in between my own remote work, I am glad to help out.
 
So in a strange way I am fulfilling the direction of MLK Day, and I do it throughout the year.
 
Funny, in all the jobs that I had throughout my career, I never actually had MLK Day off. I think the holiday actually became an official one 35 years ago or so, and I never had it off.
 
But most other people I did business with did—certainly in my last job, all the government agencies I dealt with had the day off—but not me. You wanted the day off, you had to use one of your personal or sick days.
 
So I worked on MLK Day, and I guess that simply working fulfilled the service quotient for that day.
 
But where do I sit, or stand, the day after MLK Day?
 
As I said, I have all these duties to fulfill for my family, but beyond that, my mother still does not have an appointment to get her vaccine, and I am at my wits end in what to do about that.
 
I guess I will still look, because that is my obligation to my mother.
 
But will I grab the prize? At this point, I doubt it.
 
I have no luck in such exercises, so my mother is going to have to wait until beyond her next birthday in March to get the vaccine.
 
By that time she will be 90 years young.
 
What a disgrace this is. She should be at the front of the line and the actuality is that she isn’t even on the line.
 
I can’t do anything about it, which makes it that much worse.
 
“I have a dream,” too, and right now, that dream is to get my mother vaccinated.
 
Right now, that dream has been nothing but a nightmare, or at the very best a bad dream.
 
I haven’t reached the mountaintop, and at this point, I don’t think that I ever will.