Just another typical weekday morning;
we could do them in our sleep, and often that is really not too far off of how
they start. Eat breakfast,
walk the dog, brush your teeth and load up in the car; sometimes I think we
really don’t even need the clock. We may run a minute or two late, and believe
it or not, sometimes even a few minutes early, but we’re always close! We have
developed such a routine that we could be mistaken for a family of robots.
As we reached the halfway mark
between our home and the school, the traffic begins to get heavier and slow
down, and eventually we came to a complete stop. Don’t think for a minute I am trying
to compare the traffic of my micro-town to real city traffic, but remember I
said we were a family of almost-robots. Even my passenger daughter could tell
you approximately what time we should pass certain landmarks along our morning
commute. “Oh no” she says, “must be another wreck”. I’ve noticed
that the closer she gets to driving age the more attention she pays to even
little fender-bender accidents.
The closer we get to the intersection
of our road and another main highway, the slower and thicker the traffic
becomes. We can see
flashing blue lights ahead, but there is no sign of an accident. When we
finally reach the intersection there is a police officer detouring traffic away
from our preferred route and all lanes are attempting to merge in to one. “How late am I going to be now?” my
daughter asks, “I’ll get detention if I’m
tardy.” I know that even if there are no more delays she will be at least
fifteen minutes late, but I decide not to mention this and attempt to change
the subject. “Why don’t you check my
Facebook and see if you can find out what the problem is”.
I think we both thought that we were
the victims of another all-to-common-lately bomb threat, but were surprised to
learn that a pedestrian had been hit and the driver had left the scene. A big crime for a small town. We
were a solid thirty minutes late getting to the school, but with the large
number of busses and cars I saw arriving late, I assured my daughter that she
wouldn’t get detention. I laughed and told her that now her day would be thirty
minutes shorter as she climbed out of the truck and headed for the door.
I have to admit that my initial
reaction to this morning’s delay was one of irritation; this was messing up my
routine. But as I
headed for the office I was struck with how easy it was to throw a monkey
wrench in to our normal everyday life.
Not to say that a fellow human getting struck by a car is a small thing, this
will be the worst day of their lives for several people. It is just humbling to
think how easy it is for a single event to change so much.
We have all become so accustomed to
getting both our information and our entertainment from television that is sometimes
hard to tell the difference between the two. With a click of the remote we can go from live
footage of a mass shooting at an elementary school, to laughing on a road trip
with the cast of Family Guy as they head for space camp. From footage of a
flood that will kill and bankrupt many, to smiling as a fictitious handcuffed
suspect is lead to jail; the neat, hour long crime drama coming to a close. The
act of separating fact from fiction gets tougher and we become desensitized to
the real pain felt by the genuine victims. A morning, even like this one, makes
me happy to have the other 364 (often boring) days of my life.
