My world is getting smaller.

As I sit here watching the football game (my team is in the lead after a slow first half) I look around at how I have ordered my immediate world.

Within reach are two TV remotes, a Time magazine, a can of ginger ale, my phone, a box of tissues, two study books and one really stupid novel (a friend recommended it and I am determined to at least skim each page so I can chat with her about it - what she saw in it is beyond me - I thought she was much deeper than this). Obviously with this description I withhold its title and her name.

I am covered in a fuzzy lap robe, sitting in a rocking chair with my feet up on a stool, cat wrapped around my feet, computer on my lap. If I could get the little college fridge back I could have cold drinks within reach.

Except for the computer I embody the look of a 100-year old who has lived a long life and whose
world is now the immediate, what she can see and touch. This 100-year old may wonder, or perhaps not wonder at all, where all the stuff is that she felt so attached to, so enamored by, so protective of. It all lies outside her peripheral view and has been forgotten. Or she may not wonder at all, after all, "out of sight, out of mind."

The lesson, if there is one, would be that life essentials are so many fewer than we think they are, what is necessary is much less than what might be expected and that what is desired is often not all its cracked up to be in the long run.

My world is indeed getting smaller. What would it take to encourage me to enlarge my world? As I pondered this, the door bell rang. Turning off the TV, I put down the my Ginger Ale and computer, threw off the afghan, removed the cat from my feet, rose from the rocker and answered the door. A Girl Scout was making the rounds of houses taking orders for cookies. "Ah," I thought, "this is what it takes. Cookies!" It was such a simple revelation.

And that's what I think about it.