Time
The thing that scares me most these days is that there is not enough of it left in the way I’m currently living it.
How My Day Begins
Two cars face south. One car faces east. One for an architect and one for a receptionist. One for me. If it’s a good day, I reach our intersection of parking and going before either of the other two. Sometimes I’m there after the architect, but before the receptionist. If I’m running late, I’m running late.
The architect waves slightly or mumbles “Good morning” if the windows are open. It’s a feint at being personal without really being personal. I cannot help but think that the architect lives in a castle somewhere. A Greek castle. Kastro. Greek from the Anglicized Greek letter decals on the back of her Jeep. Gamma Tau Alpha. Beta Kappa Mu. Something something something. I imagine it stands for the Legion of Chick Architects from the university whose parking stickers also adorn her Jeep.
The receptionist nods and juggles a wave from some portion of a free appendage which is not carrying her lunch or her cell phone. She’s always talking on her cell phone. Always. If she was not talking on her cell phone I might see it as an omen and turn around right there. The world might surely end if she were not talking on her cell phone.
I imagine that the receptionist starts her day under the guard of ravenous wolves, has to deliver liquid explosives in shaky glass and wood cases to some point between her home and work, and knows that she will be bound to a cross with a ball gag in her mouth once she gets to work. That’s how important the three and a half minutes on the cell phone are to her each day.
I do a U-turn and circle two blocks out of my way to be certain my mother isn’t camping in her yard in her night gown or hasn’t blown up her apartment. Most days she isn’t and hasn’t.
Then I’m on the road. The news is on the radio or maybe it’s the university sports report in season; it’s only different depending upon who finishes first. For some reason I find the university sports report a comforting listen. I don’t follow the local university sports or any other university sports for that matter, but I enjoy listening to the sports guy and the DJ discuss the university sports. They’re complimentary, not argumentative. They support the local university, but they do not appease it. They’re actually objective, and that seems rare in most media which seems sensationalized for ratings.
There’s always a commercial for assisted living. Hmmm. There’s always a commercial for assisted living. How is it I’ve wandered onto this station and stayed here? How has the mix of unoffensive Katy Perry Pop and one hit wonders from the 80s and 90s become a fit for me? And how do they know that someone like me actually has a need for assisted living in my family? It’s insidious and delightfully uncanny. Assisted living. Heating and air conditioning. Banking. These are all things that I need. I’m a demographic.
Here’s the bowling alley with its flashing marquee. For some odd reason I like it when the marquee flashes days of the week. ”Sunday Sunday Sunday All Games $1.50.” ”Wednesday Wednesday Wednesday Leagues Forming Now.” I will watch the sign as I come to it and then watch it in the rear view mirror to see a day flash.
Here’s the big INTERSECTION. Every working day I inevitably reach the big INTERSECTION between 7:40 AM and 7:42 AM. If you didn’t mind the two-minute lag, you could set a watch by me. More times than not a special education bus is in the lane ahead of me. Often a truck delivering lumber is in the lane next to me. If it’s not the lumber truck, it’s the utility truck. I’m a little unnerved when its the rare truck delivering a funeral vault.
My drive to work is a capital L standing on its head facing backwards, and it’s here where I make the big left turn. Always the left turn. Never straight. Never right. On foggy or rainy mornings I sometimes dream of going straight. Down into the lake area to take pictures.
I cannot help but think that all of us have such a choice on our obligatory drives. If I just turned here, I could do this instead. I often go those other ways on my days off, but it’s different. Going those ways then is as common as making the left turn on days I work. It’s living out of sequence that counts as truly living.
At 7:47 AM I’m pulling into the back parking lot of the restaurant across from work. Twenty of us park there. It’s closer than our company parking lot at the back of the plant, a 1/4 mile away. The restaurant doesn’t seem to mind so long as we stay out of the lanes for the trucks and the RVs. Here there is 50-feet of sidewalk to the big street and we wait upon the patience of the traffic to let us cross on our crosswalk. The big street seems like a river to me sometimes, another test like the big left turn. If I make it across I’m at work.
I rarely make eye contact or acknowledge the people waiting for me to cross. I’m slow and I know I’m keeping them from their drives. I know this and I hear this from the way they accelerate away. And the big street seems like a river, so I just want to focus on getting across.
Beyond the big turn, across the big street, my day has become work’s day.
