Just Another Day

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.