Unsung

I saved the world again today.

Nobody noticed.

They never do. And I suppose that’s my fault, because I’m pretty subtle about it. I don’t do this with fanfare and lightning strikes and shooting fireballs out of my fingers. I do it with words. Or thoughts really.

I don’t like to boast… just… well, when you’re all-seeing, and all-sensing, and all-knowing and so forth…

#

I was watching the news when I saw that story about trouble in the Middle East. The risk of war.  I’m such a softie, I can’t stand to think of all those children suffering, and all those people displaced. Not when it doesn’t have to be. World leaders need to step up. Well, I make a phone call. I don’t know the President of the United States, but I know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody. They don’t know him directly either, but they do know that pilot on Air Force One, and if his dinner is a little iffy and he can’t fly the president over right away… and the replacement pilot is likely to be tardy – so his performance evaluation suggests - …and the president’s landing will end up being just before the British Prime Minister’s, too late to go marching in on the UN Assembly, so they’ll have to wait until tomorrow… and in the meantime, over a drink…

And now that I think about it, that scientist I read about earlier today was so close to a breakthrough on cancer. Sure, I can’t afford to back him financially – not to that tune anyway - but if the bus is late and he has to wait a bit longer at the stop, it’ll give that professor he used to know a chance to run into him at the same stop. There’ll need to be a different ad on the side of the bus…  Well, I know the bus driver’s wife… I know which company places those ads.  And I can disguise my voice.

Because it’s all in the little things, isn’t it?

#

I have such a fine office.  It’s a beautiful corner office, ten flights up, overlooking busy roads. Maybe busy roads don’t sound like the perfect view, but to me, they’re just so full of life, you can see all those people walking to and fro, all those different coloured cars. There are so many different lives being lived down there, and so many little clues that tell you who is who and what they want. Lock all that up in a memory bank, because you never know when some Third World dictator is going to turn his attention malevolently towards his neighbour, or when that Warlord might think about a coup.

There’s a knock on my door.

Goeffrey, my assistant.

“Come in,” I stand, up smoothing down my skirt.

“Just got some mail for you, Sandra.”

“Put it down on the desk.”

“Just there,” he directs my attention as he lays it neatly on the corner.

I can see the way he’s playing with his wedding ring, and there’s that look in the corner of his eye in the last few days that’s been bothering me. I say him, “Actually, Geoffrey, there’s something you could do for me. I forgot to get washing powder when I went to the supermarket yesterday. I don’t suppose there’s any chance you can run down there for me, is there?”

“Sure. Of course.”

Am I taking advantage of my position? Hm, perhaps. But I know that the walk there will give him a bit of time to think, and that the couple who always eat together on that stone bench will get him thinking about his wife, regretting that silly tiff they’ve been having. And I’ve seen on the way in to work today that the supermarket has such lovely bunches of flowers out the front and at a reasonable price.

I have faith in Geoffrey.  He’ll think of it.

Sometimes the little things need saving as well.

Piture credit/discredit: author's own work