二枚ずつ (ni mai zutsu)

It's Friday afternoon and the teachers are in their weekly meeting.

Just a moment ago, one of the older male members of the community entered the teachers' room - he's the basketball coach for the elementary school boys team. He handed the office lady two sheets of paper. He then asked her to make two copies of each. He was standing maybe eight feet from the copier.

I can't decide if (1) he doesn't know how to use a copy machine (he is an older fellow), or (2) he's just being old school and having a woman do his work for him. At first, I assumed it was (2) and got a little pissed off. Then I realized the whole interaction didn't really affect me in anyway. Nor did either of the parties involved - the old man or the office lady - come away from it in any worse of a mood. In this case, it was very interesting for me to observe my reaction to the situation and the way I thought it should have gone (him making his own copies) versus the way it did.

Ultimately, I realized that the only person who was affected by the whole exchange was me, based on my conditioned expectation about who should do what (man with paper makes his own damn copies). It's a small but significant realization, because when I'm faced with a much more serious situation, it will be nice to have the peace of mind and awareness to prevent myself from being ignited by any certain reaction, to face whatever whatever is happening and just accept the situation as is.