Ruminations Before My First Cup Of Coffee

I wake up late; it is eight o'clock in the morning, the sun streams through all the windows, I am disoriented.  Denying with a gulp that I have balance issues, carefully putting one foot in front of the other I manage to walk a straight line to the front door, open it, and step out into the brightness and  humidity of a Florida morning in search of the New York Times in its blue plastic wrapper.  There is none on the corridor.  Happens about three times in 365 days.  A neighbor stole it, suggested my inner Paranoia, although the two obvious candidates for that theft are a middle aged sullen shop supervisor who always takes the elevator and thus would never walk in front of our door, and a very kindly middle aged bartender who habitually walks past on his way once a week with a bag of trash for the dumpster.  No, there was no delivery today and by now it is too late to email the Times to send out a replacement.  How easy it all was when you knew the delivery guy and had his number and called to say he'd missed you, and one of his family arrived on their bicycle, you heard the thud on the front porch, easy as pie.  Now I will go by CVS, Walgreens, Publix, oh, the choices are endless, but require me to drive across the dread Tamiami Trail, a super highway that the locals, oppressed by a local planning board obsessed with driving and using Los Angeles for their model, must engage almost every day.  The obscene car culture down here and the humidity are the two impediments to life lived in Paradise, as the advertisements always show--the old folks here swooning about on the golf course and tennis court.  When you're ninety, yes, it does seem true, I have seen many of them at our club, playing good tennis is still an option, but driving, although a necessity is not so promising.  The local paper is a daily record of old folks causing accidents, many times fatalities, ah, well, must not dwell on this at eighty six going on seven.  Uber is the answer.  I need never drive again.  Like the teenager eyeing his or her date nervously in the shadows where they have parked after the high school dance I just have to summon my courage: okay it's now or never, Uber drivers can't be that scary.  How did I get to this from opening the front door for the Times?