The Mighty Construction Truck

Behold the mighty construction truck:

When I used to have a job (heh), I would see this truck every day on my way in to work. (I think there’s more than one.) I’m not sure what it was transporting, possibly rocks, cement, small animals, but invariably I’d get stuck behind it on La Brea and Santa Monica Blvd.

You can’t really get around him. As you can see, he’s taking up both lanes, and woe to the driver trying to skinny on up his right side to make a right hand turn onto Santa Monica Blvd. It does not work, you are doomed, you are at the mercy of the Mighty Construction Truck, and you cannot move until he wants to.

It used to be annoying, and I used to take alternate routes to avoid the La Brea / Santa Monica intersection altogether. But as I became more beaten down by the events of the past few months, I just couldn’t care enough to get my brain into Alternate Route mode, and so would just sit behind Mighty Construction Truck. I stopped caring that I was behind him around the start of February, actually.

One morning not so long ago, another driver was caught behind Mighty Construction Truck. And he was FURIOUS. Honking his horn, angry gestures, the whole nine yards. But Mighty Construction Truck did not move. Mighty Construction Truck probably didn’t even see him, Angry Driver was so small, a buzzing gnat upon Mighty Construction Truck’s metal and mud flap haunches. Mighty Construction Truck does what he wants, a mechanical mammal swimming slowly through the seas of Los Angeles streets.

And in that moment, when Angry Driver was so pissed off, and Mighty Construction Truck’s red brake lights calmly blinked at Angry Driver, I had a breakthrough of sorts. I need to be more like Mighty Construction Truck. I need to be slow, methodical, I’m taking my time, I don’t care if I’m in your way, you’re not important enough to me that I stay in one lane to make this turn. I CAN’T make this turn from one lane, and I know that. You do not. I do not have the time to explain it to you. You simply have to trust me that there’s a very good reason that I am taking up both lanes right now. Chill out. Relax. It’s early still. You’ll get it later.

I appreciated Mighty Construction Truck that day in a way that I’ve never appreciated vehicular transport before. And while I’m working on the slowing down bit, the anxiety gnats still constantly gnaw on my brain you need a job, you need to sell a script, you need to get to the gym, you need to organize your desk drawer, you need to clean our your bathroom drawer, go read sixty six chapters of Isaiah, HEY! How about an anxiety dream where you’re still working at that job you hated! BOO YAH, there ya go! Wake up and start working already!

But I flash back to this seemingly idiotic picture of a Mighty Construction Truck. And take a breath.

One breath at a time.