The great equalizers

I've always thought of Big Box stores as the great equalizers. If you go, no matter who you are, you shop the same merchandise and stand in the same long lines. I used to think of airport security as the same, but now that there's the Safe Traveler (it has another name) line, the wait can be cut short and said Safe Traveler is equalized with his or her equals and not the rest of us.

But I've now found another great equalizer and it has to do with why I've been absent from this blog: a hospital surgery waiting area. No matter who you are, you wait in the same place. You watch families come, sit in moderately comfortable chairs, pace, get up for coffee, thumb idly through a magazine, commiserate with friends who join the vigil. You watch as doctors or nurses come through the large doors, escort the family elsewhere or talk lightly to them there. It doesn't matter who you are. You sit and wait.

The outcome for me and mine was good. I know it is not always so. I know there's a place equality ends.