Maybe it's the solitude. I've been on the road for over a month now without a day off, on freight schedules that have me rising at 1 AM one morning, 9 AM the next, 4 AM the following morning, etc., etc., world without end, a-men. I don't especially mind the solitude either. The cab is comfortable. I have books, music, and I can reach out to the world from this little keypad. It may be the erratic and long hours, or the solitude, but I think my friend Murphy (author of Murphy's Law) has my number. It seems that whatever takes place within the first 30 minutes after I rise in the morning becomes the theme for the remainder of the day.
For example, a couple of days ago, I awoke and stumbled across the parking lot and into the truck stop to wash out my travel mug and refill it with coffee. The one and only sink in the men's room was occupied by a gentleman who was shaving, brushing his teeth, washing his face, and doing everything short of hopping in the thing to bathe. When he finally finished his ritual, I washed the mug and made my way to the coffee pot for a jolt of caffeine. Naturally, the same guy that had transformed the men's room into his personal boudoir was getting his coffee. While I waited on him again, he took his meticulous time … first slowly pouring a little coffee, then adding some cream before pouring a little more coffee, at which point he added a few packets of sweetener, took a sip of the science experiment, and then repeated the procedure until he finally ran out of space in his cup. Back at my truck, I did the required pre-trip inspection of truck and trailer, made sure my logs were updated and ready, entered the destination into both GPS units, put my baby in gear, released the brakes, and began to pull out of the parking space. Whereupon I came to an abrupt stop as another truck darted in front of me, driven, of course, by the two-legged hemorrhoid that had been plaguing me for the last 30 minutes.
This wasn't an aberration either. It was a precursor! The theme of the day having been set, one person after another would pass me in traffic and then slow down, never going quite fast enough to move along, though never going slow enough to justify the effort and time required to pass him. Eventually, my self-designated escort would exit the highway, much to my relief. No sooner would I begin to celebrate the newly opened road when another vehicle would merge onto the highway directly in front of me and assume the duties of the driver who had just exited. It was shift-change for public nuisances.
It causes me to wonder: Is it solitude, or is it age that has me to noticing these things? One morning, it became apparent that I had wondered into Freak Day at little truck stop in someplace I can't remember. I bid good morning to the manager, who was standing behind the cash register, and she answered with, "We out 'o eggs." Well, that narrowed options down a bit. I was in the middle of ordering a ham and swiss croissant when a skinny little cupcake of an employee with a bad lisp pranced up to the manager and interrupted, telling her, "Dey said you want me to go in da freezer and pick up two bags and I was like, fo real?" "Yep," she said, "put on ya jacket and go get tha bags. They only weigh five pound each." "Pssshhhhhhhh," he said (having evidently sprung a leak), "I already been to da hospital fo picking up heavy [stuff]."
I finished making my order while Fresh Prince of Idiotville turned his attention to another employee and started talking to him. The manager finally dispatched both of them to their jobs, and then looked straight at me. I thought she was going to say something, but she just stood there. That's when she began singing! "Ooooooh baaaaby, mmmm mmmmm mmmmmmm yeeeeaaaahhhhhh." She began gyrating -- in sections. One section would start a ripple that would travel to the next section down and start it gyrating in the opposite direction and so on, until she looked like a human slinky with parts flying all out of synch with each other. I couldn't hear any music, but then she was the one wearing the headset. I got my order and practically ran out of the place, even more worried about the future of the country than usual.
As it turned out, the remainder of THAT day was filled with one human abnormality after another. It began to wear on me, so that by the end of the day, I sought out a booth in the corner of the restaurant, as far away from everyone as possible. That was when, predictably, a very large fellow and his wife arrived at the booth directly behind me. When the big fellow -- we'll call him Jabba the Customer -- plopped down in the seat directly behind me, it had a seesaw effect that nearly launched me across the room. I tried to make the best of it though, honestly I did. When he decided to blow his nose loud and long in the restaurant, it sounded like the contents of his head were being spackled into his hanky. I didn't say a word, though my appetite was waning. But when he followed up that little display of grace with a chunky, wide open-mouthed belch, I quite reflexively turned around and asked, "Would you like me to get a waitress to clean that up or do you want to barf first?" His wife sat there wide-eyed and speechless, and Jabba the Customer didn't even acknowledge that I had said anything. A few minutes later, they left.
I had surprised myself too. Thoughts that would normally bounce around in my head are spilling out with greater frequency. My Mom worries that I'll end up in a fist-to-cuffs, but I take solace in two options. First, like the Toby Keith song says, "I ain't as good as I once was, but I'm as good once, as I ever was." There's also the possibility that they'll see the white beard and dismiss me as a cranky but harmless old curmudgeon and let me be.
There are, however, positive aspects to this newfound spontaneity. It works like this: After a brief lunch, you stop in the convenience store for a mug of decaf. Then, upon spying some delicious little jelly-filled donut bites, you try to retrieve one of the little plastic bags from the rack so that you can load it up with sugary goodness, see? The bag tears. So you try another. It tears too. So you try to grab the next bag from the bottom. It won't turn loose from the other 200 bags. So you try to grab the bag from the top corner where it hangs from the rack. The rack falls off the counter and onto the floor. Whereupon you say, a little louder than you intended, "Screw it! Didn't want the damned donuts anyway." At which point the cashier calls out to you that the coffee is on the house. And this is how you get free coffee. Granted, Murphy will insure that everything you touch for the remainder of the day disintegrates, but at least you get some coffee out of the deal.