You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Watching your son drive through a red light.
OK, maybe it was yellow turning to red.
Benjamin Moore calls that traffic moment I witnessed: Tangerine Fusion #803.
I call it, “Hey boy, I’m gonna whip that ass!”
It’s a Saturday Night and I’m returning home. I’m on the four lane leading to my house.
Cars are jockeying for position, all rolling at 55mph. The road is dark, but well illuminated. Driving conditions are dry, and good.
Suddenly I’m behind a grey Chevy Cruz.
The vehicle looks like every other 4 door mid sized sedan built in 2016.
As we approach the intersection, the green light turns yellow.
Stop or Go is my 1st thought.
Problem is, I’m behind a grey Chevy that is also evaluating the space left to stop versus the time left to scoot under the light that is now a bright shade of sunflower yellow.
I look for the car’s brake lights. I see none.
I watch as the vehicle accelerates toward the darkening yellow light, now bordering on saffron.
I realize the driver is going for it.
In a stop or go world, the Chevy driver is going.
I can’t half blame him. The stopping distance at this juncture would be difficult, if not dangerous, certainly jarring. I’m in that motoring no man’s land where you either have to hit the brakes aggressively and hold on to your fillings, or punch the accelerator, check on coming traffic, and hope your insurance is paid up.
I begin to tap my brakes, knowing that I would have to ride the bumper of the car in front of me to scoot under the yellow.
Since this is not NASCAR, and drafting bumpers is frowned upon, I begin to decelerate.
The little grey Chevy is now clearly in the intersection as the traffic light darkens from Canary Yellow to whatever that millisecond of light before red is.
The light is now Blush, perhaps a light Sangria color.
That’s when I notice the last three digits on the license plate of the grey Chevy.
Hey those are the same numbers on the license plate of my Grey Chevy.
In that moment of realization I realize that’s my 18 year old son, zipping through the changing red light.
As I watch my car and my son accelerate under the light, now a full Crimson, Cherry, Alarm Bell Red, I come to a complete stop.
As I sit there, waiting for the light to turn green, I’m frustrated. Not a single car uses the green light from the other direction.
I sense the back log of lights and drivers behind me. Even though I’m in the front of the line, the lights filling the cockpit of my car, bouncing off my rear view mirror into my eyes, make me claustrophobic.
I wonder to myself; Was that my kid driving through that red light?
Did he drive through a red light?
Or did he simply do what a million drivers across America just did at that very same moment; drive through a caution light that was between Stop and Go?
Should I be mad at my son? Was that my son?
That’s my car, I think to myself. He should be more cautious, I murmur.
I laugh in my own head, knowing that if I was 10 yards closer, I’d have punched it and went for the Tangerine colored light as well.
The light turns green and I begin the annoying process of building up momentum lost. I listen to the car change gears, struggling to find cruising speed.
The little Chevy is gone, into the darkness of roads that lead ahead.
Sadly, I will catch every single red light that it is possible to catch on the way home.
I’d have made better time on a farm bus, full of chickens and goats, climbing a mountain pass in Peru.
I get home and text my son. “I saw you run that red light.”
I watch the little text symbol percolate. After a minute he says: “I totally made that one. It was yellow.”
I laugh. Yellow? You mean Butterscotch? Bumble Bee? Maize?
What yellow is that boy referring to?
Be careful, boy, I text back.
I am older and wiser now.
He is a good boy, a good driver.
He doesn’t drive like me then. He doesn’t even drive like me now.
But the random moment in time makes me think.
The difference between 10 yards, one second, 55 mph and 65 mph, a green to a yellow to a red?
It all adds up on the universal abacus of life.
What if another car was coming the other way?
What if there was a squirrel in the road?
What if What if What if?
Life can change in a blink of an eye.
But you can’t live life thinking what if.
And so Green to yellow to red.
It’s simply a motoring equation of suggested behavior.
It doesn’t mean it will keep you safe.
It simply is another road sign in life that guides us moment by moment.
Life is a constant series of stop or go events. Rarely are choices all green or all red.
Sometimes the difference between the two is Tangerine Fusion #803.
Life’s Crazy™