Don’t You Have Anything To Say?
Looking back to before the holidays….
I am in the car, and I am talking. Shane is in the car, and rarely says anything. I just keep talking, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t.
As I am talking, I frantically discover the traffic. Suddenly we are surrounded.
I’m supposed to turn left into the mall, but everyone is turning left, because everyone is going to the mall. What made me think I should get Shane’s booster shot two weeks before Christmas on a Saturday … at the mall? This is crazy. Traffic is nuts out here; look at this traffic.
I don’t turn left. Instead I drive to the next street and make a U-turn, try to sneak in that way. Now I’m in the right lane with 497 cars. The whole time I am considering my options, making my driving decisions, I am pointing out to Shane: look at this traffic!
I tell Shane, in as many different ways as possible: the traffic is completely out of control.
I am in the lane to turn right – but the line to turn right is ten times longer than the line was to turn left. How did I not see this? I am 50 yards from the stoplight and we sit through that light six times. We can’t make a right.
The people who are turning left – making the turn I didn’t make – are blocking the people who are turning right! I will never get to make my turn! No one will ever get to the mall!
See this, Shane? Look at this traffic! These people are all crazy!
Just then, a white SUV zooms past all of the waiting cars. He’s flying – maybe 40 mph – and then SCREEECH! – he hits the brakes and the turn signal. He has just zipped past every single one of the 497 cars who are waiting to turn right, and he wants to turn right, too. But he wants to do it in front of everyone else. And he thinks that by politely using his turn signal two feet from the intersection, someone will believe that he simply didn’t notice the 497 cars who were waiting – “oops!” – and that he just suddenly remembered he needed to buy a pair of mittens.
I gripe about this white SUV for five minutes. Shane hasn’t spoken in as long as I can remember. Sure enough, someone either kindly or idiotically lets the white SUV into the line four cars ahead of me. I talk about this for another few minutes before I realize that I no longer know what Shane’s voice sounds like.
“I feel like I’m talking to myself again!” I wail, dumbfounded that he has said absolutely nothing in response to my detailing everything that is happening with the traffic. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“I was just listening,” Shane says. “You are just talking about the traffic.”
“Don’t you have anything to say about all this?” I say, grandly waving my arms at the four million cars surrounding us. “I mean, you should have something to say by now!”
“It’s just traffic,” he says. “I can’t figure out how you have so much to say about it. We’re moving along and we’re going to get there. What else do you want me to say?”
And that’s when I realize, again, that in spite of my technical job title as “teacher” and full-time position as “mother,” Shane is always going to teach me how to live.