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Volunteers: Thank you for your service.

This one goes out to the ones I love: volunteers. Sure, it’s National Volunteer Week, but what really pushed me to write this blog was a traffic jam on Wednesday. I was on the way into downtown DC, but our area has plenty of winding back roads, and I found myself stuck in a long line of cars pretty far back from an intersection. I couldn’t see what the issue was, but I saw that the line was moving. Whatever it was, some kind of progress was happening. When I got up closer to the intersection, I saw that a pair of cars were pulled off to the side of the road, following what appeared to be a minor fender bender. Nobody seemed to be hurt, but obviously it was a high-stress situation for everyone involved, including those in the long lines of traffic that extended in every direction. In the middle, though, was this guy. Or, I should say, this volunteer. Standing in the middle of this messy intersection was a man directing traffic with precision and skill. He was in jeans and a polo shirt, but he had the solid posture and total confidence of someone in charge. Maybe he was an off-duty police officer, maybe he was in the military, but he was definitely the clear-headed authority in a tangle of stress and confusion. He was a volunteer. When it was my turn to pass through the intersection, I rolled down my window to give him a […]