Skull Truck Is Invited to the Party

Maybe this has happened to you. You are driving the usual route to the place you go every day (job, library, watering hole), and a familiar car shows up in about the same place it has shown up before. Maybe it’s a remarkable color or has unique detailing. Maybe it has a memorable vanity plate. Maybe it’s a beat-up pickup truck, hand-lettered with alarming proverbs and festooned with plastic skulls. 

In our case, it was Skull Truck. Hard to miss. The kids enjoyed announcing it when they spied it on our way to school. Eventually we wondered how many other cars used the same route every day, only we don’t realize it because they look like ordinary cars. 

Now we keep a lookout for several regulars in the company making their way down McCausland Avenue every morning. There’s Iridescent Pink SUV with Black Quarter Panel (known simply as “Shiny”); “Buumblebee,” a black mustang with hand-painted yellow racing stripes; Dented Explorer That Is Always Trying to Get Ahead of You; several cars known only by their plates (ROJO; TH3 H4T aka THE HAT; BB8 S4D), and Subaru with Grateful Dead Stickers. We feel like we know them a little bit, even though we don’t know their names. 

We wonder if anyone recognizes our car and has a name for us. 

*not the actual skeleton truck

I imagine a Commute Party, which is a thing I just made up, with these regulars. It’s like a block party, except instead of the neighbors on your block, you invite the people you always see on your commute. Because every day, for a little while, in an in-between space, they are neighbors. We’d eat cocktail weenies and commiserate over the timing of lights, the bottomless potholes. We’d ask if anyone knows how Dollar Tree’s big window got broken and when it’ll be fixed. And how about that guy who got evicted from under the overpass? Yeah, I’m gonna miss him too. 

You know, just a chance to unwind and process the rat race with each other. And then we’d wave when we see each other every morning, and the race wouldn’t be so ratty.

***

Sometimes I get home from my early workout to find the same man walking on the street past my house, veering to the right in order to get out of the way, except he doesn’t realize that he’s walking directly into my parking spot. When I noticed the pattern and he didn’t, I began to get impatient. One day I arrived at my parking spot before he did and decided to introduce myself.

“Good morning! (Observation about weather),” I said, getting out of my car.
“Ain’t it the truth,” he said.
“Say, I often see you about this time of morning. My name is Anne.”
“I’m AJ.”
“Hi, AJ, nice to meet you. Now we can say hello when we run into one another. Have a good one!”
“OK, sure.”

We don’t have an amazing connection, but now that I know his name, I can be patient when AJ walks right into my parking spot. Again.

***

Patience is hard when someone slow is in my way. I have been known, at times, to yell at the cars ahead of me in traffic. “YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME, TIMID VOLVO!” I am ashamed to say that my children hear me saying these things at high volume, see me battering the steering wheel. I am grateful that they forgive me when I ask them. 

Would I come to make allowances for Timid Volvo if I saw him every day? I hope so, but Timid Volvo wanted to turn left in an impossible situation and forced me to sit through two green lights until he finally realized he couldn’t get anywhere unless he turned right or proceeded straight through the intersection. I guess I can’t call myself a Christian unless I admit that Christ’s forgiveness also covers Timid Volvo’s shortcomings. 

For a short time (but longer than I’d like), Timid Volvo is my neighbor, and I am his. He might not be in my particular Commute Neighborhood, but he’d be invited to someone’s Commute Party. I should not yell at Timid Volvo, or any other misbehaving driver. 

The thing is, I’m supposed to be on the lookout for these mistakes. We all learned that safe driving is called defensive driving, and the vehicles out there are the forces against which we must defend. There’s no accounting for what those stranger-wackos might do. But something about AJ’s ambling gait or Explorer’s dented fender creates camaraderie in this anonymous daily parade. It reminds me that each pedestrian has, and each vehicle contains, flesh and blood just like mine. It gives a wider perspective to the daily grind. After all, we’re literally sharing a journey here, and I can’t welcome the stranger and the sojourner if I’m busy ignoring his humanity.

Skull Truck has taught me this. He might have impaled crania on regularly spaced pikes above his cab, but he’s a guy who is trying to get somewhere, just like the rest of us. Having him as a neighbor makes my world a little more familiar. A little cozier. And I bet he’d bring killer snacks to the party.