Latin class in high school, many decades ago now. Not sure I remember which Latin scholar said it, I want to say Seneca, but it’s been a long time and that may not be correct. If I trusted search engines more these days I would look it up, but my faith in getting a correct answer has diminished in the last few years. But that’s another story.

But it’s not my fault! We loved the translation back in Latin class, it made us laugh. Such was our naiveté. We thought only teenagers used that expression. Little did we know that adults made use of it far more than we adolescents every dreamed of. How nice to be able to go through life not acknowledging that our actions have consequences, and accepting that we are responsible for the actions we take.

Recently in Sunday school class, our pastor was leading a discussion on race relations in our Southern state. (this was pre-pandemic, we are gathering online these days). One of the church members made the comment that he had worked in real estate right after college, he is retirement age now, and he remembered a client telling him that when she and her husband bought their house they had to decide between the house they lived in now and one, at the same price, in a neighborhood across town. Her house now was worth slightly more than what she paid for it, while the house across town, the one she made the decision not to buy, was worth several times the original purchase price, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Her neighborhood had become mostly black, while the other was almost exclusively white. I felt compelled to point out that what was really important about that fact, aside from the loss of value of the investment, was that in the United States, property taxes fund education. So the schools in that area have a meagre amount to spend on their schools, while the schools in the upper class neighborhood have money for every amenity. What shocked me about this SS class was that the member who brought up the subject of real estate, said he had never thought about the disparity in the school systems.

Sed non culpa mea est. Is it really not our fault that a zip code determines what kind of education a child receives? I suspect it really is all of our faults and until we are willing to admit that we have participated in systemic racism we are unlikely to change it.

This past week, just as summer arrived the air conditioner on my work van would only blow hot air. Since I use it to travel to various sites throughout the day I could not just leave it at the service center without another vehicle. So company Fleet Management set up a rental car for the duration. It should’ve been easy, the rental company was just across the street from the service center. I suffered through the next day since I had to leave early, before either the service center or the rental car agency were open that morning. I received a call from from the rental place saying they had a reservation for me, and we agreed that I would give them a call when I dropped off the car at about four o’clock that afternoon. Everything was set. As you may have guessed, this is the car company that picks you up.

I arrived at the service center and before I went inside I called the rental agency, said I was onsite and was ready for my pickup. I went inside, gave the service agent my phone number, he looked up the vehicle, took my keys and said he would have it diagnosed by about lunch time the next day. Luckily, the place was not crowded or I would not have had a place to sit, there are only three chairs, one of which is outside, due to social distancing. I check emails and take care of a few things for work, watching each car that drives up to see if it’s my ride. Not my ride for twenty five minutes. Next I see two people ambling in at the door, both wearing the rental car company logo on their shirts, so I get up and ask if they are my ride. They said, Oh, if you need a ride, the car is out there, gave the description and went to talk to the service center representative. I head out to a small sedan, (Fleet management had reserved a mini-van for me) and a young woman, with no face mask, is at the wheel. We drive the few blocks to the car rental place, where she drops me at the front and drives around to the back.

Due to the pandemic, apparently the office is closed to customers, but the employees, who all appear to be between the ages of twenty and thirty, are walking in and out, girls dressed in workout clothes and sandals, guys in khakis and golf shirts. Five customers are standing, one older lady is sitting in one of two chairs outside on the sidewalk. All are maintaining social distancing. I stand apart, thinking because I have a reservation, made almost twenty four hours before, that I’m ready to go. Not so. Customers came and went, the line slowly advanced. The girl who picked me up came out and got in a mini-van and as she drove past me rolled down her window and said, I’m just going to have the van washed, it shouldn’t take long, and went around the side of the parking lot. A couple of other cars had to be washed as well, so it took twenty more minutes for the van to reappear, dripping wet. The girl came up with her iPad, or whatever brand she was using and said she had walked around the car to check for dents or scratches and saw none, that I could walk around it if I wanted to, which I did. Nothing to speak of but it’s hard to tell when the car has water all over it. And then, the most surprising thing of all, she (she never told me her name so I don’t know it) asked me for my debit card. Now this was an instant red flag. I’ve rented enough cars personally to know that a car rental with a debit card puts an instant hold on potentially several hundred dollars in your account. Plus, this was a fleet rental, I was not personally responsible for the charge, nor should it have been made to my corporate credit card. I gave her my corporate card, she said for a deposit and initialed the iPad where indicated, and left.

I remember when this same company, instead of sharing cars around the region so that the employees spend all of their time shuffling cars back and forth between the various sites, each had their own fleet of cars. One location might have several Priuses for driving in downtown or passenger vans for large groups. Another might have big SUVs for family vacations. And I remember too, when working at a downtown office in Atlanta, that the manager of the branch close by would drop off my rental vehicle, sit in the reception area to hand me the key, and have another employee give her a ride back. The paperwork was already taken care of, they had all of my information on file and appreciated my business. That was right before the change to sharing vehicles occured, and I’m sure that manager is no longer with the company.

Things have certainly changed. From a business woman, professionally dressed dropping off a key to the vehicle parked in my office parking deck, clean and with a full tank of gas, to waiting for an hour, half of it standing in a parking lot while a bunch of young kids wearing casual, to say the least, clothing, walk around with iPads pushing buttons. When they’re not shuffling cars around the city that is. I took the van home and cleaned the inside of the windshield, which has become standard procedure. But not before I stopped and bought a bottle of water, which the youngsters were drinking themselves, but never thought to offer to their customers.

Progress.

As part of my work, I drive a lot. Lately I have noticed an increase in the number of individuals who, for whatever reason, disobey the law. Recently, on the same day, a motorist decided to deliberately run a red light, and another deliberately ran a stop sign, or would have if I had not had the right of way and laid on the horn. Numerous other instances of the same thing have happened on the roadways, both interstate and neighborhood roads. This is not the scramble to get through the intersection before the light turns red, this is looking around, weighing the chances of getting away with it, and deliberately running a light or sign. As though it doesn’t matter. It worried me that so many think so little of the law. It isn’t as if no one sees them, I am not the only one on the road. There’s always plenty of traffic. And it isn’t just one set of people, like those in old beat up cars, or brand new ones, expensive cars, economy cars, or foreign cars, or domestic, it’s across all types. So just commenting that a larger and larger percentage of people are choosing to ignore the law if they feel it’s in their best interest and they can get away with it. Blatant disregard, as though the law is only there for those who choose to obey it. And somehow, as though the law is only for losers. Maybe this is where we are headed, where everyone is expected to take their chances and see who wins.