I Bet He Learned His Lesson; I Learned One Too.

An unwary young bicyclist rode by me today, not wearing a helmet. He inadvertently made eye contact and I asked why he wasn't down in Seattle going to school. He told me that he had temporarily left school and gone to work on an oil rig. I gave him my standard lecture about dropping out of school. It's a variation of the whole Road Not Taken thing, you know,
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I showed him the symbol of my servitude the scanner that I must use so I can be tracked and he was horrified. Having shown him the scanner I remembered as I sometimes do, that I had work to do, so I told him that I was sorry; he probably wasn't looking to be lectured by his mailman. He hastened to assuage my concern, "No, I loved hearing your pearls of wisdom. I even used to ride the bus in Seattle so I could get pearls of wisdom from homeless people."
Nice to know how I'm perceived by my customers.