Comcast-ed

This afternoon, while waiting for our son to finish an interview in a Philadelphia office building (he's only just arrived home from college, and we wanted to take him out to dinner to celebrate the completion of his sophomore year), my husband and I wandered into the Comcast building on JFK Boulevard.  I'd watched the building go up a few years ago (indeed, the whole city did; you can't miss it), but I'd never gone into the lobby.

It's wild in there, I discovered—seemingly wooden panels erupting into the scenes above (and just as suddenly the scenes disappear and the "wood" settles back in, only to precipitate another visual eruption) and strange, storybook figures doing balancing acts far above one's head. I needed that kind of disorientation today, and in discovering it, I found myself remembering myself years ago, a University of Pennsylvania freshman to the sophomore who was Brian Roberts.  He was just a guy who liked to dance back then—a nice guy, a very decent one—he was that to me, at least, who had no idea what actually lay in store.  Today, as the Comcast CEO, he's one of the wealthiest men in the world, a man who often uses his position on behalf of public good.  The past can seem strange, when set within the context of the present.  The future lives in this building now.  History only lives in my head.