Vinceland

The vision of a water fountain in the middle of a park popped in my head today. Not sure why, but I realized what an amazing thing it was to concieve, produce and deploy cold drinking water fountains in parks. There they stand, in the middle of wooded recreational areas, ready to provide clean, safe water whenever someone happened by and needed it. I even mentioned it to Jet today.I mean, whoever decided it was a good idea to pump cold, clean, safe water into the parks where I used to play as a kid was a super nice person. It was great to play under tall oak trees, on slides, on spinny things and on springy things and get real thirsty. But it would have sucked bad without a water fountain. I would venture to say I would not have played as much without them. I might not have met my best friends.

I remember riding my mountain bike out in South Mountain Reservation near South Orange with those friends. We knew the location of every fountain in the park, we mapped them out and carried just enough water to get to them. (Carrying too much would mean less SPEEEEEEDDDDD.) I miss riding bikes in that place, I don't think you can any more. I had to trust the person that installed and maintained those fountains. That person had to be a trustworthy person, the water company had to earn and keep my trust, without ever meeting me. It would have been so easy to break that trust, let the pipes go bad, pump shitty water into the system, make sure the water was dirty and warm.

I had to trust the drivers of the cars around me on the way to the office today on I-5. I had to trust that they would drive responsibly enough to keep us all on track. I had to trust that they would act on the signal their car made, a slight change here, speed up there, slow down. They had to trust that I was not a freak on a hell-bent rage to slam into as many cars as I could on the way down here today.

I have to trust everyone, everyone has to trust me. Take that worldwide and take it into your family. Without the important trust thing, life becomes scarier and requires too much mind-wrangling. I just need to trust that things will be where and when I think they'll be. From the soap for my pits to beef kabobs I'll eat later, I just have to trust that people are not going to screw me or my loved people over. And they have to trust me for stuff too.