Just another day at the office
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As the seconds become minutes, the minutes become hours.
Each day this happens 24 times, forming an unbreakable cycle that frames our days.
Thursday in Charleston, in many ways, was a typical day. From 12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m., the sun rose and set; the moon hung in the night sky.
And for the people working in Charleston that day, nothing they did was all that out of the ordinary.
Justin Peterson, a patrolman for the Charleston Police Department, rides in his patrol car doing his best to serve and protect in the first minutes of the new day.
A few hours later, Geri Senter, a waitress at the Lincoln Garden Restaurant, pours her first cups of coffee for her customers who, perhaps, are on their way to their own jobs.
Alone, nothing these people do is out of the ordinary. Together, what these people do makes Charleston more than a city – what they do makes it a community.
These are the people who bring out the first batch of doughnuts and brew the first cups of coffee. They stock the shelves at Wal-Mart.
They sit us down in a chair, put a cover on us and cut our hair. They fix our shoes, or in the case of people like pastor Cindy Jones, they help us repair our souls.
They stock the coolers at Gateway Liquors and serve the drinks at Roc’s. They also are the people who fix us up when we act out after drinking in excess.
These are the people who help us pick out a pet, whether it is at a pet store or a shelter. And, eventually, these are the people who will do what they can to make sure that pet is healthy.
They grow our food and deliver our pizzas.
They repair our bicycle chains, fix our cars’ brakes, wash our school buses and check the landing gear on our airplanes.
They run our university and pick up our garbage. They teach us tae kwon do.
They’re present at the start of our lives at birth, they’re our day care, they make our engagement and wedding rings, and when it gets near the end, they carve out our gravestones.
For these people, providing goods and services for Charleston yields more than a paycheck. It yields a community.
While this all happened Thursday, it could have been anytime – for them, it’s all in a day’s work.
