Monday, September 7, 2009- LABOR DAY
A Bunch Of Workin' Fools
I'm not really up for celebrating this Labor Day. Maybe it's all those working fools out there who suddenly found themselves unemployed these past months. If you're still among the employed, then you have reason to celebrate, I guess. Isn't that what we live for? To work? It certainly consumes the biggest part of our existence. And why is that? I know when I was younger my thought was work hard now, retire early and live life to its fullest upon retirement. Now, I think I'm just happy to be working, if I retire I'll become bored and want to keep working anyway.
I've also found myself thinking about us working fools in a different light since Weymouth Police Officer Michael Davey died. Any one of us, when we walk out the door and head off to work, might not be coming back. Granted, in some situations, like Officer Davey, the percentages are higher of that possibility. Those that protect us inevitably must consider the possibility of dying at work. I remember almost exactly 35 years ago in August of 1974, a colleague of my father's entered a burning building that was once located down the street from where I now live and died from injuries he sustained, doing his job.
I have worked in construction all my life, a job that could be considered somewhat dangerous, albeit not as dangerous as firefighting or law enforcement, but dangerous just the same. I have seen fellow workers get seriously injured and have heard of others dying. Ten years ago some workers went into the new outfall tunnel that runs out into Massachusetts Bay and died. Certainly, most people that think of the Big Dig, Deer Island and the clean water in Boston Harbor, do not consider that workers died to provide those necessities.
Others have gone off to work in what may be considered the safest of environments and not returned. When we think of September 11, 2001, just 8 years ago this month, we remember the firefighters that lost their lives; but most of those that perished were office workers that I'm sure did not give a thought to dying as they prepared for work that day.
Be careful out there and when you get back home, be happy.
POSTED BY STAN on September 7, 2009
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