Things You Don't See

You probably have never thought about "the things you don't see," but I've been thinking about it recently.  There are two kinds of "things you don't see."

The first one is-things that are there, but you haven't noticed.  This happens to me all the time in my own house.  My wife buys something new or moves something to a different place and weeks or months later I ask her, "is that new?"  Or, my wife will ask me if I saw the strawberries she bought for me and of course I tell her I didn't because they are in the back of the fridge.  And when I open the fridge, they are right in front of me.  Why didn't I see them?

The other day I was sitting at a traffic light in North Myrtle Beach and I looked up the telephone pole and saw a green sign that said, "Charlotte" with an arrow to the right.  I know why I haven't seen that, because no one else is going to see it up the telephone pole.  Why is it there? Do you know have far Charlotte is from North Myrtle Beach? It's 188 miles away!

The second kind of "things you don't see" are things you really only see once.  The shortstop cutting across the pitcher's mound, cutting off the relay from the outfielder and flipping the ball to the catcher to get the runner at the plate.  Derek Jeter made that play in 2001; it's the only time it's ever been done.  There are plenty of sports moments that live in infamy such as: the band coming on the college field as the winning touchdown scores,(California beats Stanford) the receiver clutching the ball to his helmet on the final drive in the Super Bowl(David Tyree), or even the field goal kicker with half a foot kicking the game winning 63 yard field goal which set the record for the longest field goal in history.(Tom Dempsey)

Sometimes you see something in your day to day life that you've never seen and won't see again.  In our neighborhood there is a house with a very large wooden swing set.  Right next to the swing set is an identical swing set.  There are two kids and two swing sets.  Have you ever seen that before?  A few weeks ago I stopped for a red light and I was in the left lane and the lane to the right of me could turn left too.  A tractor trailer had just turned left through the yellow light and then a car turned left through the red light.  And another car turned left through the red light, and another car turned left through the red light.  All three of my passengers watched in disbelief as four straight cars turned left on red.  I know you've never seen that either.

Most of the day we're focused on what we see, which makes sense.  However, maybe every once in awhile we should pay close attention to those things that we don't see.  Who knows, we may never get to see that again.  It might even be a twenty dollar bill on the ground!