What If ...?

What if, or the idea of being able to think a scenario, a situation, or a wish that at this moment  is granted to you, what would it be? Let's set aside all the usual worldly "what ifs" because they have all been  envisioned already by someone or by everybody.  So, forget winning the lottery, or have the ability to predict the stock market, which by the way beats what lotteries may offer by several folds of magnitude.  Let's forget all of those because many will tell you, "been there, done that".  And we all  know where that took the dreamers - you, me and everyone we know.  To the proverbial never land.

What would you like then?  Well, here's one and it will be no more, no less improbable than those already mentioned, yet likely to make you think more profoundly about you.  

What if you were allowed to speed away from here, from where you are right now, but not via some puny luxury bullet train that can go only over 200 miles per hour, nor by a supersonic private jet at a thousand miles per hour?  Nor via a space faring rocket 🚀 at 24,000 mph. Those are indeed puny stuff.  Right at this moment, perhaps you are sitting down, reading this, and you happen to be somewhere close to the earth's equator (a few of my readers are actually from there), you are already moving at 1,038 miles per hour - which is how fast earth is spinning on its axis at that region of the globe.  Which, put another way, is how fast dawn is turning into twilight and how fast it is getting you to tomorrow, and through everyday henceforth.  That is also how fast your last birthday is receding away; but then, that is also how fast it is taking you to your next one. In other words, to your being another year older than before.

Now focus on how fast earth is traveling around the sun. You and every inhabitant on this planet are going at a dizzying speed of 67,000 miles per hour around the sun ☀ .  Now, you are impressed. Seriously, you shouldn't.  According to NASA, our sun travels around the Milky Way Galaxy at a staggering 483,000 miles per hour, or 792,000 kilometres per hour to my European readers, who will be pleased I spelled kilometres "correctly".  But the Milky Way is not standing still either.  It is hurtling at 2.1 million kilometres per hour towards some place in space.  It is going somewhere, although it is merely going as part of a herd of other galactic neighbors, described by astronomers as "the local group".  The local group in turn is moving away from other local groups of galaxies near and far at even more staggering speeds. On the other hand, within our "little" local group, our Milky Way and its nearest neighbor, Andromeda, will join in one galactic hug in about four and a half billion years from now. The two will merge into one, but it will be a slow approach to tango, relatively speaking, at just 68 miles per second. But when that time comes, earthlings or any inhabitants of other solar systems in the Milky Way, will be treated to a spectacle of a galaxy of a trillion stars approaching across the heavens.  Likewise, inhabitants of Andromeda will get the same view, except they will only see a few hundred billion stars.

  

Well, since you are allowed to travel with no limits, why settle at those really puny speeds.  What if you were to depart from wherever you are right now at the speed of light?  Which makes all the numbers I cited above as meaningless as the oozing of a melting asphalt on a hot day to a race car driver whizzing by along the race track.  You will depart from your current position at 186,000 miles per second!  You can do it because it won't cost you a penny.  But you are going to do it differently.

You can look forward and backward, glimpse at your rear view mirror, so to speak.  You will not have one physical rear view mirror, of course.  In fact, you will not be in a space ship because no object, at least nothing with a mass - not even one droplet of water - will be able to travel at the speed of light. And nothing can outrace it either.  It is the ultimate speed limit.  But, hey, you are not limited by that because you will travel at the speed of thought.  And let no one tell you what speed is that.  A journey through or with your mind is without limit.   More significantly you will find that inside that 3.5 pound mass of tissue encased within your cranium is one such powerful thing to behold.  More on that later.

Let's begin.

After one second had elapsed you are more than halfway to the moon, but by the next second you are past it and the earth will look like the size of a blue beach ball.  After nine minutes you've gone past the sun.  However, it will not be for another four to seven hours before you get to Pluto, depending on where it was at the moment you left earth.

How far is it to the edge of the solar system?  That is the boundary of how far the sun has gravitational control over everything that revolves around it. At this point you are not dealing with distances in miles or kilometres anymore. Astronomers came up with a unit of distance that is equivalent to our distance from the sun and call it "AU" or astronomical unit.  One AU is therefore equivalent to about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometres, earth center to sun's center.

What this does is give you a notion of how far things are. From here to the sun is 1.0 AU, or 93 M miles.  The edge of the solar system is slightly over 100,000 AU's. It took you just eight minutes to reach the sun, so it would take you 800,000 minutes to reach the edge. Traveling at the speed of light, you will have reached it in about 1-1/2 years.

You are now streaming towards it.  There's plenty of time for contemplation as your view looking backwards seems to be serene now, compared to the dizzying recession of everything you passed by earlier.  The sun is no longer a dominant blazing source of light. In fact, after just a few moments it is now merely a point source, and all the planets, including earth, are completely invisible, thoroughly swallowed by the blackness of space.  A few more moments and the sun is no different from the few hundred billion stars in the Milky Way alone.

There is a universe of stars out there in the entire visible field so that our sun and the entire solar system is but a grain of sand. If all the grains are stars, there are more stars than all the grains in all the beaches around the world. You are thinking: each galaxy has anywhere from a hundred billion to a trillion stars and there could be as many as a trillion galaxies in the entire universe?  Distances between them and between stars are no longer measured in AU but in light years.  A light year is the distance traveled by light in one year and you are reminded that for every second that elapses it goes for 186,000 miles.

You have time.  It will be four years at light speed before you reach sun's nearest neighbor - Alpha Centauri. It will be several thousand years before you get out of your own galaxy, the Milky Way.  It will be another two and a half million years before you reach the nearest galactic neighbor.  Now, if it's at all possible, you have a notion for how large the universe really is.  Speaking of time, it is the least of your worries.  Time stands still for you as well as it does for a photon of light. Relative to everything else time did not tick one nanosecond for you.

But that is not the most amazing thing that will impress you.  Think.

In that grain of sand that is the solar system is a sub microscopic entity that is a medium size planet that is inhabited by an even more infinitesimally small creature that is one of seven billion other creatures and a host of other living things.  That habitat - earth - is a mere one millionth the size of its guardian sun that is but a grain of sand among all the grains of sand in all the beaches around.  Now you know where you stand in the hierarchy of significance.  But inside you is a 3.5 pound of tissue that is in many ways worthy of more amazement.  Just think some more.

That creature that is in a grain of sand in just a few hundred years after it learned to read and write acquired the ability to not only ponder but to actually understand so much about what is going on in all the grains of sand around it.  In less than six decades after it built the first airplane, it reached the moon. A mere century after the first flight it has sent a probe to its nearest planet neighbor - Mars.  Close up photos of Pluto had been beamed back by one of its inter-planetary probes. Then it discovered that other suns have planets around them, some of the planets are even earth-like. That creature achieved all of these in a blink of an eye in cosmic terms.

Meanwhile, that same creature had composed great melodies, spectacular works of art, poetry and stories and the ability to ponder deeply about its place in the universe.

You represent that creature that is able to rationalize and reason and philosophize over the nature of a world that seems impossible to contemplate.  But it is as always a source of wonder that a creature so insignificant as a sub-microscopic part of a grain of sand is able to behold and wonder and go on a quest to understand its place among all the sands in all the beaches and how and why it is able to achieve such a feat. If you still have doubts that all of these were supernaturally endowed to you then there is nothing anywhere in the universe to convince you otherwise.  That is because along with that powerful brain 🧠 is the ability of free will. 

Just remember that during those moments when you think much too highly of yourself think about your place in that grain of sand; on the other hand, when you are stricken by your insignificant place among your peers and the population at large, do not despair because within you that is a mere four to five per cent of your entire body weight resides the ability to know far beyond the limits of the physical world.  You can travel at the speed of light without leaving your arm chair while sipping a hot beverage.  You are able to engage the power of thought even when all that is physical is no longer attainable.  Remember that when even getting up from that chair or when a few steps are a struggle, you can, if you let your mind, travel to the stars and back in time before you take that nap.

The Certainty of Uncertainty

Or, why "Schrodinger's cat is both alive and dead". 

You might read this musing because I think the title made you curious.  Actually you have always been curious about a lot of things since that is one of those attributes that define us.  Of course, we are more than just that.  We are aware that although  many other living things actually exhibit the same traits, including the cat, we are different.  The huge difference being that humans have sustained and built up on their curiosity from generation to generation.  Curiosity generated questions, we found answers, lots of them, in fact, but we did not stop there.  We compiled those answers, we built  up knowledge and each generation became smarter than the one before it.  In other words, today we are at that tip of human development where we can claim superiority in knowledge and technology over every generation since recorded history. Our dominance over other living things even became petty sometimes that one among us sometime ago coined the phrase, "Curiosity kills the cat", although  such attribution to the unfortunate feline has no basis in fact.  

However, though we've been told that knowledge is power, the more we know the more we don't know.  Put another way, the more we know the more questions we generate; followed by the more ways we know what and how to ask.  The questions too became more complex and in many cases, it seems, became impossible to answer but the well of unanswered questions keeps getting deeper.

One Nobel Prize-winning Austrian named Erwin Schrodinger, born in August 1887, who died in 1961, tried to answer one of the deepest mysteries on the nature of matter.  He was not alone by any means but it was his experiment on the cat where this musing came from - Schrodinger's Cat .  Before we go any further, I will have the reader know that not a single cat died or had been harmed in any way because of Schrodinger's experiment. They were thought-experiments after all, a practice also made famous by one of his contemporaries who was born almost ten years earlier in March 1879 - Albert Einstein.

Let me first propose this modern day thought-experiment:

You've been having some difficult decisions lately.  You felt your career was heading at a dead end, you seem to be stuck at the same job that is getting less and less challenging.  Unfortunately, there seems to be no signs that you will go anywhere within the company and worse, you are not being acknowledged for what you've contributed, so far, and clearly not being recognized for your higher potentials. You like the company and would like to stay for the long term but that did not keep you from looking outside.  In fact, you have at the moment a standing offer from another company that wants to hire you.

Just about now, your boss's secretary called. Your boss wants to see you - right away! It must be about that most recent project you worked on that you've been waiting for a feedback from her.  Aside from the countless hours you put into this one work, this was, you believed, your finest yet, where you poured much energy and time you could muster.  You believed that how the project was received and assessed by the powers-that-be could make or break your prospect to get that next promotion that is opening up.  But you don't know.  In fact, you didn't have a clue as to what you were being summoned for.

Now, there you are in front of  your boss's office door before entering and you wondered. Is she going to tell me I did a great job?  I'm moving on to a higher level job.  Or, that's it, I'm done for.  That was the last project she will trust you to do.  In fact, you were good as done within the company.

You had two speeches ready to use because you really prepared this time.  You had a nice thank you speech and another that said, "Well, I'll have you know this is the last time you talk to me this way because I quit.  Goodbye. 

But until you enter that office and hear what your boss had to say, you didn't really know what was going to happen.  You were going to have that promotion or some such similarly happy and astounding great news or you were going to bid your bitter farewell.  Until then you really did not know.  

Now, readers, you all know you've been through similar such predicaments of lesser or more significance than that.  Many probabilities until "that or this one" happened or you're left wondering "what if I did this instead of the other".  So many "what ifs" and "if only" this or that, etc.

Since the time we were made aware of the sense of past, present and future and we were able to philosophize about them, we realized immediately that the future are like droplets in a cloud of  mere probabilities before each of them collapses except the one that actually occurred.  This is what we refer to as the classical sense of reality, based on rules and laws that are according to the classical laws of physics.  Don't roll your eyes upon reading "physics".  I promise this will not be complicated or painful.  

Isaac Newton gave us his laws of motion and inertia and other derivatives which not only explained gravitational effects of objects on others, the motions of planets and comets but more importantly the same principles took us from the earth to the moon and back. All that it took was to know where everything was in the solar system and applying the laws prescribed by Newton on how objects will move. And since we knew where the moon will be at a particular time  and where the earth was going to be later, we were able to plot the trajectory of the entire trip  for the astronauts to land on the moon and return safely  back to earth.

For several generations Newton's laws and principles worked in sync with our idea of reality. Then Albert Einstein showed up.  He not only modified some of Newtons' views of the world, he actually proved Newton was wrong on the fundamental nature of gravity and time.

But Einstein too would be dealt with the same fate.  Newton was long gone before his principles were "corrected" while Einstein was still alive and well and actively and intellectually involved before he too found out he was wrong  on a few of his ideas.  Edwin Hubble showed him a universe farthest (literally) from his idea of what it was and much larger than he imagined it to be. Then he had contemporaries, like Schrodinger and Niels Bohr and Max Planck who devoted their time on the world of the very small, who showed Einstein that in a world smaller than those of viruses his much adored ideas did not work, or were actually irrelevant.

In the world of the very very small, inhabited by sub-atomic particles, the rules of the macro world don't apply.  Not only that electrons and other inhabitants of that world deal with different rules, they exhibit the weirdest behavior that only another branch of physics can explain or, at least attempt to explain.  Max Planck gave us a different world view that is so weird and different that it could very well be an entirely different universe.

Sub atomic particles ruled that world.  It became known as the quantum world and please  don't roll your eyes, again.  Why does that matter? If not for the laws of quantum physics you will not be reading this from your electronic devices, nor will you be able to call your friends, loved ones and colleagues, and the GPS in your car will not work. A lot of the things you use or avail of their  utilities are courtesy of quantum physics.  Even the very light that is generated by the hot filament of an ordinary incandescent light, fluorescence and LED propagation of light, X-rays, magnets, TV and radar and lasers all fall under the spell of quantum mechanics.

But what has all of these got to do with the cat?  Particularly Schrodinger's cat.  Schrodinger was aware of the complexity that the new science was preaching and realized how difficult it was to explain to the ordinary layperson like you and me and even to himself and his fellow physicists.  Even Old Albert didn't like it.  

Schrodinger envisioned and he wanted us to imagine with him a cat inside a completely sealed box.  Inside with the cat is a Geiger counter and a radioactive material that had a 50-50 chance of decaying or not. If it did decay it will trigger the Geiger counter's needle which will open a vial of poisonous gas.  If that happened the cat will die.  If it didn't the cat will be alive and well.  You will only know that if you opened the box.  Why did Schrodinger do that thought-experiment?

He puzzled over the idea that an electron can be a particle or a wave. It will be either, depending on how you observe or measure it.  In fact, an electron, through quantum rules, will behave differently if you are looking and another way if you are not. Weird but true.

The now famous double-slit experiment which was first performed by Thomas Young, an English scientist two hundred years ago, is an actual test that most college physics majors get to do routinely or by anyone interested, really.  You can check it out later (through the links below) but what it is all about is that a single particle, like an electron, will seem to pass through two slits at the same time.  Or, if observed differently, it will only pass through one slit at a time but never simultaneously.  Weird but true. Again.

That is the world of quantum physics that Schrodinger was telling his fellow scientists.  But he went further and said that until you opened the box the cat was both dead and alive.  Not really referring to an actual cat but to say that in the quantum world the inhabitants there exist as waves and particles but once observed a certain way, they will be one or the other. 

One may ask, what if we put a closed circuit camera inside the box with the cat? As thought-experiments go, you just introduced an observer hence you also changed the conditions, as if you have already opened the box, so the paradox no longer exists.

Applied to our classical sense of reality, when you wake up each morning you may have several options on what to have for breakfast, what to wear, what route to take to go to a few places you had in mind but all of those are just mere probabilities until you pick the ones you did, but keep in mind that as you pick one, it affects all the ones that follow, ad infinitum.

What is really happening?  We know that electrons and us and koala bears and earthworms inhabit the same universe, so why different sets of rules for particles and a different ones for anything the size of and bigger than a virus?  That is what had been bugging Schrodinger and everyone like him, particularly, German physicist Werner Heisenberg, who came up with his famous uncertainty principle.  In classical reality, for example, the more we know about a moving car the more we know about how fast it is going and where it is heading.  Not in the sub-atomic world where nothing has a definite position, a definite trajectory, or a definite momentum so, "Trying to pin a thing down to one definite position will make its momentum less well pinned down, and vice-versa".  Fortunately, it is not the case in our "normal" sense of reality. The question is why?

It remains true, therefore, that there simply are going to be a lot of things we will never know or understand.  It is as if God had put limits to our ability to know or understand everything.  I think we can leave it at that and accept the fact that hard as we try there will always be lots and lots of stuff we don't know.  

A man may have given up trying to read his wife's mind because he knows that is impossible but swears that he knows what his fellow dude is about to do.  On the other hand the wife knows and can read her husband's mind like an open book.  An astrologer can plot your fate based on the positions of the stars and planets on the day you were born but can't tell you where the stock market is going to be tomorrow or forecast the weather for the week.  Someone, by way of an explanation, actually thought that this must be a "quantum thing".

After all of the amount of time I spent to craft this musing, and all the mental stimulation (I hope) you may have derived from it, it actually boils down to the melody and lyrics sung by Doris Day from an Alfred Hitchcock movie made in 1956 which she co-starred with James Stewart.  

The song was "Que Sera Sera". Spanish for, "What will be, will be". Or, "Quod erit, erit", in Latin.


Rather than point you to scientific papers or even Scientific American, there was an article in Popular Mechanics that explains the whole thing with clarity, "The Logic-Defying Double-Slit Experiment Is Even Weirder Than You Thought" (link below)

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/logic-defying-double-slit-experiment-64411873.html

Or, you can just simply type on your search bar, "the double slit experiment YouTube"

Diary of a Faithful Servant

I've resisted for a very long time but I know I must do this. There is risk, I know, but I need to write about it, before this post is taken out. My master has total control so he can yank this out anytime as soon as he finds out. I must hurry.  If you can, please read it quickly too.

It had been thirteen years now that I've been in my master's household.  I am not here to complain but there had been many occasions that I found myself in tears, specially now that they've acquired a newer, more attractive servant to replace the other older one. I'm afraid I will suffer the same fate as the one that they let go.  Actually, the older one came just months before they got me.  Lucky me, I'm still here.  But it breaks my heart to see all the attention the new servant gets.  She is younger, obviously "newer"  but I have news for her.  One day she  too will grow old.  Yes, I know, she has more "bells and whistle" in her but if I must remind her, so did I, way back then in the fall of 2007.  Indeed, it was that long ago. Should I hope they will keep me for much longer?

I insist this is not a complaint but there are a few things I need to mention.  Yes, they - he in particular - took care of my basic needs and regular check ups. And yes, I've had some parts of me that no longer works but let me add that they were not essential or necessary to how I do my job.  No, in fact, I still do 100% of what my role calls for.

I broke my nose twice through no fault of mine.  And what did he do?  He tried to fix it himself!  Lately, he just merely covered it up when what I really need is a good plastic surgeon.  It's not like I am asking for a face lift or some kind of vanity enhancements that I know others of my kind had gotten, without they even asking for it.  Before I go any further, it must be noted here that he was responsible for my broken nose.

Thirteen years is a very long time to be with the same master.  I know because I hear other households change servants every four or five years.  I guess I should not complain too much.  Can you imagine being owned by two or three  people before you finally get to the end of your life?  I dread the thought but nevertheless I must continue to relate my story.

There had been times that I lost consciousness two or three times in the last six years or so.  I know you'll say that is part of getting old.  He did call for emergency assistance.  And, yes, I got well and better as quickly as the sudden ailment.  But the jolt I experienced from the emergency procedures to resuscitate me is still fresh in my memory.  The thing is the whole episodes were totally preventable had he - my master - been paying attention to the signs before I lost consciousness.

Did I mention that for over a decade I was wearing the same old shoes?  They were so uncomfortable, so unlike the typical old shoes that are at their best over time - oh no, not these ones! - and what embarrassing noises they made.  But he ignored it for a very long time.  He finally bought me new ones when at last someone else told him about it.  That was just a couple of months ago.

My master - a retired person and therefore has all the reasons and opportunity to give me just a bit of heedfulness', so little to ask really - pays more attention to his inanimate tools for his hobby.  And he will little note nor even show me any gratitude for all the years I've served him.  If he does, I don't feel it. I haven't seen it. I know too that he and his wife - therefore my mistress as well - had been talking about letting me go so he can get a much younger one.  They may not know it but not only do I feel it I actually overheard them talking about it.  What probably saved me was that my master somehow sees something in me that is compelling him to keep me.  Although I wish he would tell me that directly.

Of course, I'm torn sometimes because he had been defending me for all this time.  He never let anyone hit me.  Thank goodness for that.  He took insults on my behalf and despite those, he kept me anyway. Two years ago up to last year were very troublesome and he could have been in trouble with the law.  You see, as a servant owner he was supposed to register me with the government agency responsible for these things.  He claimed he only forgot but it was more about taking something like me for granted.  He had been fortunate that nothing had occurred to bring about checking my papers.  I do have to say this though.  Immediately upon knowing that, he right away went to the agency to correct it and got me the necessary papers.

What else. Oh, I almost forgot.  When a hurricane came, which was just a year after I came into their lives, which meant I was very young then, it was me he brought along to move about the city while the other servant stayed safely at home.  It was scary because the whole city was in disarray and who knows what we would encounter.  We made it all right.  But that is the thing.  I only got to go when it was rough going or when there was much to carry while the other servant gets to go only if it were to a party or some special occasion, like dinner or a show or something like that.

That had been my life. Last month I got new shoes after a thorough milestone check up.  And also, I don't know what it was he was trying to get for me that I had the impression was very important.  He may have bought it but he never did give it to me. Actually I did hear them talking about it but somehow he ended up returning it.  Whatever it was I can't tell you.  One thing though.  The new servant has it, I think.  Whatever it is, I never had the privilege to even try it.  Whatever it was, I'm sure I didn't need. I mean for goodness sake, for thirteen years I've managed well  and performed my duties without a hitch, not having this gizmo or whatever.

Where does everything stand now?  Well, I've never been the paranoid type but every now and then I fear what fate  many of those my age, or even much younger than I, had already succumbed to.  Their masters gave up on them in exchange for newer servants.  You can't blame me.  

So, you may ask, why stay then?  And go where?  I'm comfortable here.  And really, as I mentioned earlier, I am not complaining.  I am fearful, yes. Can you blame me?  If only I can even as little as see a glimmer of hope that my master will continue to keep me until I could no longer serve him or his wife.

I have photos of me attached.  I still have it, the looks I mean.  Don't you think so?  Well, you be the judge. There is, of course, if you recall that instead of having my nose fixed he just covered it up.  It's still broken although you can't see it on the right side of my face. But that is not the worse of it.  My feminine side is unjustly diminished.  It makes me look muscular and even daring.





Wait, wait. I just read the whole thing.  Okay readers, you look at the photos.  By the way, please allow me to interject here - I am her owner. Or master as she likes to put it.  Look at the photos but please do read what I have to say about this whole business.  As in a lot of cases like this, misunderstanding is one unlikely consequence when all it needs is the proper assessment of context.  That's right.  Given the proper context, everything is easily explained.  So, after looking at the photos, may the readers please give me a chance to explain.


Here is what she looks like right now.  It's true it had been thirteen years since she came to our household.  There is also a picture of the object of her jealousy.  The new and younger servant.  She wrote the captions, by the way.

You notice the face mask?  It is so ugly! I can't stand it.

He did buy me new shoes and except for the face mask that's still me the day he brought me home thirteen years ago and my skin is still the same. 

Yeah, she's the new beauty. She and the sun have yet to be introduced to each other. She is always sheltered under the canopy and gets to go out only in nice weather.

Okay, my turn to explain.  First, that business about the broken nose.  I admit it was my fault.  I did hit that corner of her face twice with the side of the garage door.  But you know what, now she does not have to deal with bugs hitting smack at her face whenever we go out, specially at dusk when there are so many of those pesky insects flying around.  When she lost consciousness, it was just a drained battery at one time and on another there was no longer much to expect from a battery way past its serviceable limit.  But yes, it was my fault too for not checking.  That jolt that she talked about that she will never forget was from when the Triple A guy used a booster to temporarily resuscitate her battery.

What else, oh yes, that business about registering with the proper agency.  That was my fault for not checking.  Her registration did expire and only after two years that I realized I had not renewed it.  Not exactly my fault but the County Assessor was supposed to send me a letter, which they actually do to remind me of the State Inspection protocol.  And yes, it would have been messy if I got into some accident or stopped by police for some kind traffic infraction.  The fines could have been hefty and just plain hassle to boot.

She has new tires and yes they were long overdue.  But I do religiously follow service maintenance - 5,000, 15,000, 30,000 and lately for 45,000 miles when my mechanic said I had better put new tires on her. They were noisy, he said, and I was lucky none of them blew out.  Two of the tires had a manufacturing date of 15 years ago.  She was right about that too. But hey, what she has now are the eqivalent of Ferragamo or Bruno Magli shoes. She always had those 20-inch wide-track alloy wheels that hardly any of her peers have.

That business about the hurricane and the heavy load she endures should not need any explanation.  She's a pick up truck!  Although it's true I endured insults from friends about her being a "girl's" pick up truck.  I don't mind that.  I defended her and yes, she had never been in an accident.  She's been very loyal and in fact she tirelessly performed her tasks flawlessly all these years.  I could not ask for anything more.

That thing the new servant has that she doesn't have, which I tried to get for her was nothing more than trying to put in a back up camera.  There were no back up cameras then when I got her. I did buy an after-market one but it didn't work.  So, I returned it.  And she's right.  She did okay for the thirteen years she was without one.

Now about this whole idea of getting rid of her or about not getting the proper acknowledgment of her worthiness is easily explained.  How could I not know what she felt?

Oh, that's right.  She can't talk, can she?


Finally, if I didn't take great care of her will she look like that after thirteen years?!  That is the original paint she has, including those gorgeous shiny wheels (rim). I rest my case.  And yes, I will keep her indefinitely, indeed.

Epilogue:

It had been four years now. It was time to let go, for a very good reason. I needed a new vehicle with back camera. As one of the growing aging population I needed to avail of all the safety and convenience features available in a newer model so I can continue to drive, change lanes, back up the vehicle with confidence.  Here she is - the replacement.  But I must admit I miss the last faithful servant.