Generally speaking I work every Monday through Friday. The drive into work is pretty busy. It takes forty-five minutes to an hour (down to about a half hour at the moment with half of the workforce on Christmas vacation). I estimate that I probably see about 2,000 other cars on my way to work. That includes both lanes of traffic and a passing view of the bumper to bumper throughway. The vast majority of them have only a driver. Since this is a pretty rough estimate we'll just say I visually encounter 2,000 people on the way to work.

The ride home is even worse. Call that 2,500 people.

Sometimes I stop at the QT for gas, a danish, maybe coffee. On a busy morning I'll see 50 people there.

I work in a four story building. We've got about 300 people here on any given day. True, I don't interact with but a small fraction of them but we'll stretch the definition a bit and say they're part of my daily encounter.

I might stop at CVS on the way home to get some milk (they have Mayfield milk cheaper than any of the supermarkets and I loooove me some Mayfield). Another 20 people or so there.

Sometimes we might need something from the supermarket. A Wal-Mart stop might even be in order. That's easily another 1,000 people combined.

I also see the most precious people in my world every day. That's four more people.

How many is that now? Let's see...2,000 plus 2,500 plus 50 and another 300...add 20 and another 1,000 then top it off with my four reasons for living. I encounter somewhere around 5,874 people in a busy day.

Now let's say that on my drive to work there were no other cars on the road. None at all. And when I stopped at QT it was empty. Nobody at the pumps. Nobody to run my card for my purchase. When I get to work the parking lot is completely empty. There's no guard at the security desk. There's nobody in the hallway. Nobody in the breakroom. At my stop at CVS I get a deja vu of the QT experience of the morning. Nobody is there. It's the same at Kroger and Wal-Mart. These massive consumer edifices lie starkly abandoned. Normally teeming with people, they are now vacant and deathly silent.

When I arrive home there is no jumble of kids at the door yelling "My Daddy's home!". There is no Lovely Wife waiting to greet me with a kiss.

Say that this happened every single day for half a month. That is about how many people have died from the tsunami in Asia.

I've been trying to wrap my mind around that number - 77,000 dead. I'm afraid that I've managed to do so.