Essential Workers: Yesterday the mayor and governor announced that "only essential workers should come into work". In today's Globe, there was a great editorial to help us all sort out which category we fall under.

So herein, a few guidelines on how to determine your place in this world:
- Essentialness operates on an inverse proportion. The more essential you regard yourself, the less you probably are.
- If you use any sort of title, whether it be Ambassador or Mr., there's a high probability that you're nonessential.
- If you have an assistant, he or she can pretty much do anything you usually do. If you typically use that assistant to dial calls and announce to the called party, ''Please hold the line for [insert title here] so and so," then you are the most nonessential of the nonessential....
So who is essential? Apparently the guy charged with plowing the left lane of the Southeast Expressway was deemed essential, the guy who was supposed to plow the right lane was not.
As a rule of thumb, the less you are paid, the more essential you probably are. If you sit in an office, the probability of being essential plummets dramatically, unless you work for the Patriots and are in charge of distributing Super Bowl tickets.
The men and women who clean the streets, fix the pipes, empty the trash, deliver the newspaper, bake the doughnuts, tend to the sick, care for the homebound -- these are the most essential people of all, lacking fame but never honor. The woman down the street who allows the neighborhood kids to hang out in her finished basement? The most essential person in town.

(Please note that MIT was the only university in town that was open yesterday. I suppose this speaks well to my essentialness...or MIT's perceived essentialness in the world. I mean, even Harvard closed.)