idling

as an 80-mile-per-day commuter, i am privy to some pretty unusual sights on the road.  i've often played the license plate game (there are some really obscure ones out there!), mused at interesting bumper stickers and signs, and marveled at curious debris in the road: whole bumpers, scraps of tires, random car parts, bags of unidentified material, tossed furniture, mysterious roadkill... and then there are the people.  the other day i saw a girl riding a horse across a highway overpass.  that was a rare spectacle though. 

usually, it's the abandoned cars that leave me guessing.  sometimes i will see the same disabled car haphazardly parked for weeks to months until it gets the boot, at which point it is really stuck.  occasionally, after a snow or rain day, i'll notice cars sitting at awkward angles, appearing to have gone off the road into ditches.  and then left there.

once, i saw a car that had "will you marry me?" scrawled on the rear windshield in large, red, questioning letters on the side of the road.  i passed the car every day for several weeks.  then i started to wonder what had happened to the couple.  had they eloped?  been kidnapped?  celebrated too much and gotten into some trouble?  had she said no and caused him to go off the deep end?  had she said yes but on one condition: to get rid of the car?  why in the world was it still there?

then one day, it was gone.  just like that the car had disappeared, without rhyme or reason, without a note explaining why.  it wasn't long before i started speculating the reasons.  the car had been towed away, unclaimed.  the guy had never gone through with the proposal and had finally pulled himself together to retrieve it.  he had been saving up gas money for the ring.  or my favorite one: they'd gotten married and honeymooned on a whim and now were back to start their lives together (and needed the car, of course)!

i guess being on the road can offer time to ponder useless questions that can not be answered; it can stretch a mind over miles and miles of hollow distance between home and a destination.