On the first day of my commute to this job, I’d started the loud music way too soon, before I even saw the on-ramp. Then I sped, shouting, into being stopped. Now I know better. I don’t even start my speakers or shouter until I’ve already fired up the sneaker-slider. I sneak and slide over two lanes, at ease with all the cars and trucks holding me in a very tight slow march.

The left two lanes are for cars only, while trucks clog up the right. Having just gotten on, I am still only noticing my own car and the nearest bumpers, until the sun from the left hits the nearest truck. We’re barely moving, so I can turn and study the big blue hi-cube full of wood chips. “Hi-cube” and “Chips” stand out in shiny print on the matte-blue trailer.

My lane picks up a little speed. I go by the chip truck, and then a True Value trailer covered with red words and rainbow paint cans. I hear myself saying to my son, see you can see what that one is for, it has a side door and it’s shorter than the others, so they can park it and because it might carry something heavy, something heavier than wood chips, though then I think how heavy the mulch is at the hardware store and remember: My son’s not here and really I don’t know anything about trucks, just that I keep passing and being passed by the same funny convoy, of wood chips and hardware and then a big orange crane, hauled by a tractor full of Marines. (I assume that from the stickers.) And now mixed into the stream is a little cab-over flatbed that says:

PARADISE VAULT

It has a man-sized concrete plinth-bin on the back. I guess that’s the vault, to put your coffin in, though I never got why. To save the paint job? I don’t even get why you need a coffin. I think I’ve been boxed enough here already, thanks. When the time comes, just turn me loose and let me help the grass grow. Or get cremated? Take home the brochure or visit our website, sir, and decide if you’d rather spend eternity as air pollution, or in a slick ride in a concrete showroom, your finish protected from the worms’ prying eyes.

Oh give me the radio; let’s ditch this lane of thought. I look back down off the trucks and flip, flip, come on, there’s like no Chaka Khan or Steely Dan, just a hundred and forty seven others I like less. Or that’s what was on twenty years ago. Who knows about now? I can’t really remember what they played this morning. My complaints about music are worn out, like the rotting Richard Scarry board book I finally recycled this week.

My favorites of his were all about going places in traffic, like “Cars and Trucks and Things That Go.” That one was a spotter’s guide of what you’d see on the move, all the everyday things like:

– A camper with a ladder to the roof, where there is a swimming pool.
– A new road being tamped down by the Tamper-Downer.
– The movers Tender, Loving and Care. Take Care, Mr. Loving!
– A Bigshot Car, with a crown on the door and a pig smoking a cigar.
– An overturned watermelon truck sliding through eggs, pies, ketchup and mustard.
– Mistress Mouse in a pink tow truck, leaping sky high at having to clean it all up.

And then we learn to drive, and to hate everyone else on IT’S A TURN SIGNAL ASSHOLE D’YOU LOSE YOUR GLASSES? We unlearn how to laugh at this morning’s Bigshot, driving a small topless roadster that barely covers his fat belly. Or the lady I’ve seen a few times, on the street by my house, a Mistress Mouse of a mom riding her son’s flashy, tiny bicycle. I figure she walks him to school while he pedals, and now, how else to get it home? “Nice bike,” I said finally this morning. I hope she smiles when she sees me tomorrow, and doesn’t lose the nerve to ride childish instead of walking proud.

I’m stuck on the highway again. I’m not a cartoon or a side-skittering nature-show crab, no matter how much the cars ahead move like that. I can crab at the cutie in a Corolla checking her phone, or at the radio, and then when I get there, I can tell my coworkers, “Worse than usual today.” (It’s not.) But why do that? Why not take the gift of an excuse, for when someone says, “Late again?” (They won’t. They never have.) I’m seated in an air-conditioned box, on the way to another one. I won’t have to stuff sausage or a dumpster, both of which I’ve done, or chop down a tree or dig a grave, which I haven’t. I’m stuck on the highway again!

I flip and sing, flip and sing, and then see the jam dissipate off an exit, and then I make sure my car can still do 80. Whatever I’ve found I’ll settle for – maybe I’m crazy? – and sing it loud: “It’s no coincidence I’ve come, and I can die when I’m done.” I ditch the coffin-bin and the crane and the wood chips. On a long downhill curve I pass a propeller truck – seriously – lacking only a Scarry caption to match its big four-bladed logo. It even has a silly slogan: “Making Props Move!” Wait, no, it said, “Turning Props Faster.” I think. Now I’m not sure.

Now that I’ve stopped I have to look it up. Please let me go again.