deeplyshallow // my fellow countrymen

my fellow countrymen

Every street in San Luis Obispo is under construction this week. Orange cones, flashing arrows, steel planks covering gaping roadwork holes: everywhere. Two-lane roads whittled down to one. Detours forced. Impatient drivers passing on shoulders and mowing down the imaginary children who I’m certain are crossing in front of the halted vehicle being passed. Special place in hell for these particular drivers, I am convinced.

In any case, on the way home from the office tonight, I fell in behind a becampered brown pickup with bright gold license plates. I instantly recognized them as souvenirs from my homeland, these beautiful sheets of metal with Alaska stamped in midnight blue, hanging over six proud characters separated by a furled blue flag. My heart hammers out triplets when I see these memories of home driving oh-so-casually around California. I resist the urge to pass the truck on the right, catch up, wave to the driver, somehow claim my own Alaskan-ness. I do not do this. Special place in hell, remember.

I am lost in my reminiscings of the last frontier when the driver puts on his right turn signal. I slow, stop. There is nothing preventing the driver from turning right, and yet we are stopped here, unmoving, frozen, stilled. I do not honk, as I would otherwise probably do; this is a fellow Alaskan, someone worth giving a pass to. So I wait. And wait. There are no cars in front of the driver, and still the vehicle does not turn. I wait. I have almost had enough when a car passes by in the opposite direction.

His path now clear, the driver of the brown truck, right turn signal flashing, turns left.

In my consternation I forget to move forward, and the car behind me honks. I drive on, staring after the brown pickup truck from Alaska, befuddled. I am more than befuddled. I am, as I regain my senses, a tiny bit appalled. A little more than appalled, actually. It isn’t enough that construction workers halt my progress at every opportunity; it isn’t enough that M. attempted to trick me into a sushi lunch, knowing how much I despise sushi; it’s not enough that I spent half my day in meetings and the other half attempting to avoid them; it’s not enough that Photoshop crashed twice before I could save my work today, or that all of my deadlines are angling towards a collision point, or that I may be working this weekend. No, my day is apparently not complete without a refugee from my own personal heaven on earth demonstrating how misplaced my faith in humanity — at least one frozen northern sect of it — really is.

Actually, disregard all that. I’m not sure I had all that much faith in humanity to begin with. I really just wanted to complain about the damn turn signal. I actually exaggerated all of the talking points in that last paragraph. I’ve really been having a pretty good day. And here in a few minutes it’ll be a little better, what with my being pulled onto the dance floor by a girl in a snakeskin skirt and cowboy boots. She won’t have to pull all that hard, let me tell you.