You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
The highway traffic jam.
How does it happen? Where does it come from.
Suddenly, out of thin air, I’m in stop and go, bumper to bumper traffic. I’m adrift in a slow motion log jam. I see angry snarls from drivers. I am subjected to creative and rude hand gestures from normally nice soccer moms.
It’s on like Donkey Kong.
GPS is even bitchy. “Traffic Ahead. Recalculating.”
and then like your pay check connected to an ex wife, poof, it’s gone.
As suddenly as it began, as long as it took to get through it, is over. It vanishes like hub caps in a Brooklyn neighborhood.
3pm today, I’m on I-40 West out of Gatlinburg. I’m doing 80 mph. I’m drafting behind an Escalade.
All of a sudden brake lights.
Traffic comes to a grinding halt. We are between exits. We are trapped.
“Must be an accident,” one of the kids hollers.
I see red lights swirling as the big yellow help truck races up the break down lane.
It tops a hill, it’s red lights disappearing.
30 minutes pass. I’m going 5mph. I am preparing to get off and use the country bumpkin Buttermilk Lane as my new route.
“No more brake lights,” my son hollers.
I look up and the traffic ahead is flowing.
No wreck. No help truck. No ambulances. Nothing.
WTF?
What caused this. We get to the place where you would think a wreck would be and we begin to accelerate.
“What was that dad?,” my son asks.
“That was one of life’s unexplained phenomena’s,” I retort.
I don’t care. I put the pedal to the metal and try to make up for lost time.
My ass is numb and my legs are stiff. I’m glad to be motoring, but it makes me wonder if we were scooped up by space aliens, experimented upon, and then returned to the scene of the crime, our memories washed.
I hate long drives.
Especially when traffic stops for a shift in the time space continuum.
And that is crazy.