It was so hot in Arizona yesterday….
I’m not from Arizona or the south where the temperatures are apparently slightly higher than the sun’s core, and I’m not from DC or California where the traffic is slower than the parking lot at Walmart on Black Friday, but I am from Seattle where the sun doesn’t shine(where people keep telling me to go) and yesterday it took me three hours to get home from work. Normally, it takes me 40 minutes to get to work and an hour to an 1:15 to get home.
I had a small errand to run on the way home, so I did that in about 30 minutes and figured that it would add about 30 to 45 minutes to my commute. It did not. Maybe some math expert can explain to me how exponentials work, but seriously a minute off a path in traffic is like 10 minutes real time. I’ve known this for years, but yesterday I lived the daymare. If ever there was a time where traffic could have become a person and I could say a few things to it, this is what I would have said. Nothing. I would have said nothing. I would have just punched it in the face and drove away. It would have cost me another ten minutes, but it would have been worth it.
How driving home felt yesterday.
So while I was multitasking by driving and thinking about punching traffic at the same time, I contemplated just how many different things I could have done if I had those three hours back. So I came up with a list of things that I could have done in less time than it took me to get home last night.
- I could have driven to a theater, watched 45 minutes of previews, The Entire Captain America: Civil War movie, stayed for the ending credits so I could see both of the teasers for the next Marvel movie, eaten popcorn for breakfast the next day and still made it home 5 minutes earlier.
- I could have gone on a three hour tour on the SS Minnow, got lost on an island, walked the whole thing, figured out a way to get off the island, sailed back on a luxury yacht, caught the Captain America:Civil War movie and been back with 10 minutes to spare.
- I could have gone back to college to take a statistics class, failed, taken it again during summer school and got an A in it, eaten some popcorn for dinner and still had a few minutes before I got home.
- I could have gone to the beach, forgot my sunscreen, got sand everywhere you could possibly imagine, lost my sandals, got burnt to a crisp, recovered from my sunburn a week later, and still had a few minutes to spare.
- I could have gone to Walden’s Pond, lived a life of seclusion, written two bad novels about it, taken a class from Thoreau on how to write, wrote two more bad novels, retired, ate some stale popcorn and still had a few minutes to spare.
- I could have played three straight hours of video games.
- I could watched the entire NBA finals.
- I could have eaten every meal I had during the day, plus snacks, and that Klondike bar for desert.
- I could have seen every fireworks show in the Puget Sound, and seen 15 million dollars of fireworks used.
- I could have heard the entire song “Stairway to Heaven”.
- I could have gone from here to New York on a plane.
- I could do one blog, post that was actually edited fairly decently and had, the commas in the right, spot and all the wurds speled corectly.
- I could have watched the entire 9 seasons of The Office.
- I could have taken a three hour nap.
In conclusion, I could have done a lot of things in three hours efficiently, but as you know, I am inefficient. So I probably would have wasted all that time doing nothing.
ARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH
Bitter Freaking Traffic Ben