Deadly traffic
Sometimes traffic just kills me. Tuesday driving home felt like trying to run in a swimming pool. Suffocating.
I left work about five. Normally it takes me a half hour, but I had a feeling it would be worse that day, so I took a different route. Back roads. Because I am so clever.
But the new route was not only as obstructed as the first, it was also more obstructed. And, it not being my normal route home, I was easily disoriented. Flustered, and trying to make my way back to the main highway, I began following cars that looked like they were commuting somewhere. SUVs and Toyota Camrys; these are, by and large, the vehicles of the American workforce.
This was a good idea (I am clever!) because it took me back toward the interstate, where at least I would not be helplessly lost. But it was also a bad idea (Rats!) because if your navigational method is to follow the traffic, odds are you are going to find what you follow. So I was stuck behind a column of environmentally unfriendly cars, all of which were blowing hot gasses out their back ends. It was hot. My car hasn’t any air conditioning. My choices were to choke on hot, dirty air with the windows closed, or to choke on the same air with the windows open. I couldn’t make up my mind.
After twenty minutes (and the discovery that the entire hold-up was being caused by a needlessly-placed stop-sign), I was back on the highway, one mile north of where I had gotten off to take my shortcut.
Finally things started moving again, and since I was focused on my second listen through of “Easy Italian: Learn in Your Car†I didn’t feel too upset. Traffic is the kind of thing that makes you angry by making you angry, and the only way to beat it is to not play along.
Fine. I don’t care. Let’s just sit here… I’ve got plenty to do; CDs, radio, reading materials. I’ll just put my seat back and relax, you tell me when you’re ready to get going again, ‘kay?
These are the kinds of things you should make traffic believe you are thinking. It only wants you to be unhappy, that’s all, if it can’t have that, it will leave you alone.
So, now about five minutes from my house, the highway started hardening up again; I could see brightened brake lights a half mile away, and though I had little more than that to go until my exit, I knew even that short distance could become eternal. Now on my own stomping grounds and confident of my ability to navigate the back-streets and their boys, I hopped off at the first ramp. University Avenue, that anti-interstate, would get me home faster than any unbroken stretch of constipated highway could.
But then University was jammed, too. But this time, not with commuters. About three blocks up there was a small constellation of police cars and fire-trucks, all grouped together on the overpass. They blocked off traffic coming from the other direction, and things on my side were beginning to get bad, too (fortunately I was turning off right away). But as I was turning, I slowed and tried to see what all the activity was about; there were no overturned cars, no fires, no traffic stops.
There, on the other side of the overpass railing, holding on with his arms spread behind him, was a man who appeared ready to commit suicide. He was chubby, with an un-tucked black shirt and some kind of bag or backpack hanging down in front of him.
It was about 5:45 on a Tuesday in September, and while I was on my way home to have dinner with my girlfriend, this person was staring down at 50 feet of air and three inches of concrete.
“I drive by that overpass every day,†I thought. “He is committing suicide on a place that has no importance to me.â€
I couldn’t bear the thought that this person’s self-imposed death (if it came) would not matter to me. I thought of all the people that kill themselves every day. They jump from bridges. They overdose. They do things.
Do those deaths matter to me?
What if every one of them did it on the University Avenue overpass I drive by every day? What if every time I avoided highway traffic by taking that shortcut there was another jumper right there, in the same spot?
There was a police officer standing behind him, about ten feet away, talking to him. The officer had his hands clasped firmly behind his back; I’m not going to touch you, I imagined him saying. I just want to talk.
It was just a second, I couldn’t see much. I had to turn; there were cars behind me. There was no more traffic. These were neighborhood streets. My neighborhood. I couldn’t get lost. I was home in two minutes.
Ten minutes later I had changed out of my work clothes and was beginning to make dinner. Soon after that I was outside, checking the vegetable garden. How long since I had driven by the overpass?
And now, as I examined the clusters of little ripening things, was he still perched there, telling the hands-behind-his-back cop not to get any closer? I’m not going to touch you, he says, inching closer, as the paramedics try to close off the highway below, thinking of ways to save this man’s life.