Some Service Suggestions.

Serve: To do services or duties for; give service to; aid; assist; help: as, he served his country as a great statesman.


Yeah, that's the ticket. I'll serve as long as I can do it as a great something. I don't want to serve in a mundane fashion, helping someone unimportant as a humble and invisible servant, not receiving any praise or money or sexual favors. I'm always a little suspicious of the "great statesman as a servant" theme. I see men and women on TV, with their names in the paper, getting a lot of attention and public acclaim to be great servants, then leaving their service to the people of this great land to take a highly paid consultancy lobbying the people they just left. Not exactly the master washing the feet of the disciple.

SuperK and I were talking last night about how we can be of service to others. We aren't going to actually do anything, of course -- we're just going to talk about it, terribly impressed with our theoretical selflessness. We hypothesize it will be easier to do without the time constraints of a job, which is kind of true but also a convenient excuse for not being of service. She mentioned a friend who started to volunteer once he retired.

"Yeah, Ricardo went downtown and volunteered to read for the blind," she said.


"Read for the blind? What does that mean?" I asked. "Do you mean he read to the blind?"

"You are such a jerk," she said.


"It sounds like he is substitute reading for the blind," I replied. "It sounds like maybe the blind are tired or pissed off and don't want to read so he's stepping in and reading for them."


"I thought the blind had Braille," I continued, making my situation steadily worse. "Are the blind even there when he's reading for them? I don't see why they would have to be there. Maybe they could go do something important. Maybe Ricardo could just stay at home and read for them there."


"Shut up," SuperK said. "I'm trying to read the travel section of the New York Times."

I thought about it for a minute. "Maybe you and I could volunteer to hear for the deaf. Maybe we could smell for anyone who has lost the ability to smell. The possibilities are endless. I think we're really getting somewhere!" I shouted.

It was at that point that I noticed I was alone in the room.

This is going to be a little trickier than I thought.