Traffic Report: Or What to do While Waiting
“Forget the fuckin’ people already. I’m Phil Garza and I’m in charge here.”
Phil Garza was the FDOT (Florida Department of Transportation) Chairman. He had occupied the title for more than eight years and had done so rather awfully. He was a prick, a real self-absorbed asshole. Forgetting the people, in this case, was acceptable to Phil. He’d forgotten the people for the last eight years. One example was shutting down Florida’s coastal highway, the massive I-95. I meaning intrastate. This intrastate connected Miami to, well, Miami; Florida to Ohio. You’ve heard the folk songs.
On this day, by referencing the people, Phil Garza meant the commuters of Florida, traveling from Tampa to Orlando. The only road connecting these two cities, two of the largest in the overpopulated state, is I-4. I meaning interstate. This interstate was planned to have three lanes by 2002. What Phil was saying he was in charge of was stretching the contract deadline like John Holmes stretches, well, stretched the women of the 70’s. If you didn’t get that joke then you should put the magazine down, wipe, pull your pants up, and get off the toilet.
So Phil, the master manipulator that he was, had persuaded the road commission and numerous lobbyists to extend deadlines for the construction through the year 2006. This was fine, this I could live with.
What I couldn’t live with was the absolutely absurd amount of overwhelming traffic. Yes, it was that bad. The road was ridiculous, in the afternoon, the morning, hell even at hours that were meant for sleeping or cheating on your spouse, it was bad. At 4 AM it was like Vegas, without the lights, the prostitutes, or Wayne Newton.
On any given night, within a ten mile duration of pavement, there could be anywhere from five to seven thousand cars. Let’s just say for the sake of keeping the math simple, there are two people in each car. Carry the zero, ten to fourteen thousand people, going one way, on I-4. Phil knows this. He’s a freak, he does all the numbers in his head, doesn’t believe in calculators, says they’re arrogant.
The thing with Phil is, he’s always been a little bitch. In school the kids made quite a game of him. They called him silly Philly and insecure, egotistical Garza. Things that really struck a nerve with Phil, maybe hit too close to home. Phil always thought he was more important than other people. From the day he turned thirteen he believed one day he would affect thousands of people’s lives. He loved the idea of that importance, such responsibility.
For me, well I’m your average neurotic, philosophical, thinker, who fancies himself intelligent. Yes people do still fancy themselves, although thanks to Chuck Palahniuk I have given up ‘pearl diving.’ If you didn’t get that joke and you got the first one, then you should now wipe, pull your pants up, keep the magazine, and go to the World Wide Web and search for, “Guts” by Chuck Palahniuk. Thanks for my check. I digress. To me things are never as insignificant as they seem. I find meaning in all the events that circle, collide, and destroy life. In particular, my life, seeing as there is some unexplainable emotional attachment to the things in my life. Strange, I know but true nonetheless.
I’m driving one night, around 10 PM, Eastern Standard, on my way home from a meeting. A meeting is what I tell people to sound important because being that I am fearful of what other’s perceive of my life, I need to sound important; at least to a handful of folks anyway. I’m on I-4, you know what the I stands for, going a few MPH’s above the speed limit. Everyone else was doing it. It’s Florida, they give away licenses at eighth grade dances, as door prizes. They’re in the jar with the condoms. Suddenly, and by suddenly I mean abruptly/quickly, traffic comes to a complete stop. This is an interstate mind you, stops come because of two things on interstates: accidents and construction. Being that I’m a sympathetic human being, I hope for the latter.
So we’re stopped, I see some flashing lights and start to think. Somewhat of an oxymoron for a philosopher, I know. As I’m going over the possibilities in my head I begin to realize that I hear no sirens. Not an accident. Which is great because now I don’t have to get mad at all the passing patrons trying to get a glimpse of tragedy. Going back in my memory a tad, I remember seeing construction signs but they were miles ago. At this point I am as baffled with why I’m stopped as you are about where this story is going.
Phil Garza sits in his office in Tallahassee, drinking a Starbucks double espresso. Only a pinch of cinnamon and a dash of whip cream. He looks over a graph charting out the flow of traffic on I-4, no more I jokes, and decides to take a well-deserved, fifteen-minute, shit break. While on the way to the head, he remembers something important: the overpass that needs a new support pillar. This overpass is directly after mile marker 33 on I-4 near a city called Lakeland, nicknamed Orlampa because of it’s geographical positioning.
Phil thinks to himself, briefly, then opens the stall door. He has now realized the importance of the situation he is in. The job of fixing the overpass will take around three days. Traffic on I-4 will have to be stopped for over an hour, absolutely no movement between miles 35 and 31. Phil gets to live his self-inflating dream again.
Here I am on I-4, right before mile marker 33, Eastbound. All my gauges are resting in their off positions. I’m still baffled, bamboozled, bewildered, and the worst thing is I don’t know what’s going on. To the right of me sits a Mustang, the Ford not the animal. It’s black with an after stock muffler that hides the fact that it has a crappy little six-cylinder engine. But it looks nice. There’s a college-aged guy with spiked hair and the dream of one day being as important as Phil Garza thinks he is.
In front of me a large cargo van relaxes. Its base color is white but the painted on rainbows suggest a sense of humor. The van is loud and spits exhaust heavily in my direction. That’s where exhaust comes from, the back, which is where I was, behind him. You may have just thought to yourself, “I already knew that.” In that case skip down to the next paragraph precisely after finishing this sentence.
Behind me was, not that it matters what’s behind me, it’s in the past right? However they do say your past shapes you so, fittingly, directly behind me was a grumbling Mack Truck, the biggest bully on the road. So obnoxiously strident it caused me to think harder and harder, to block out the engine. But it also spawned a pleasant surprise; the semi enlightened me. The fact that I was certain the last thing I wanted to hear was the piercing noise from the engine, forced me to focus solely on the irony of the situation I was in. I know, even I had to read that last sentence twice.
It was the semi that made me come to the conclusion that a traffic jam is the most humbling experience a human can go through. Sitting there, completely powerless, still trying to figure out why I wasn’t moving, I gave up. After coming to realize that I could do absolutely nothing about my situation, I became very angry. I started to think about all the ways the Constitution is false. There was no democracy from where I was sitting. I’m positive that if everyone in the traffic jam were to vote on whether or not they would like to stay in the traffic jam, they would undoubtedly vote against it. Except maybe the couple a few cars ahead that was having, what appeared to be, great sex.
There were probably some movie stars, maybe a few doctors, couple of lawyers, and a professional athlete or two, stuck in traffic right along next to me. No matter what their social status, they weren’t going anywhere. What could they do? Nothing. Just sit and wait for traffic to start moving again. That’s humbling. When in a traffic jam, people become people, no fancy business cards, no investment portfolios, and no titles. Just sit there and wait for traffic to start moving again.
At this point Phil was comfortably asleep under his Sears bought comforter set, dreaming of how great he was. I’m sitting alone on I-4 drinking an Amp energy drink and Phil Garza’s snoozing in his townhouse. He’s having dreams about the tens of thousands of people that he has control over at this moment. After all, he calls the shots; he’s in charge here. He decided for me, the college kid, the doctors, the lawyers, the couple having sex, the athlete, the movie stars, and the four little Indians in the back of the cargo van, where we’d all be at this moment. Sweet dreams Phil.
So what can we do? All of us could smash into each other, cause thousands of insurance claims, and bring the system down but the college kid in the ‘Stang couldn’t do that to his “ass-getter mobile.” We could all get pissed off and honk our horns and cuss one another out but who wants to fight with someone who’s in the same situation. That’s why homeless people get along. We could write letters to Phil Garza telling him how preposterous he is and how he should do his wife a favor and blow his fucking brains out. But Phil’s too callous to care about the people and he’s way too important to kill himself. So what do we do? Just accept the fact that life will go on whether traffic on I-4 does or not, put in our hour, and bitch to ourselves. How is that healthy?
What bothers me more than sitting still is the fact that I don’t know why I’m sitting still. I need explanation. Then I’ll be fine. I’ll drive on, give the finger to the construction workers, go home, and write a story about how I figured out life.
It wasn’t until morning, when I discovered the truth of the situation I was in, that I found my explanation. Having moved only a single mile in about 95 minutes the night before, I found someone to blame for the inconvenience, Phil Garza. Watching the morning news, the real truth, it’s all lies in the evening, I was learned by the always-attractive Julie Davis. She told me exactly what I relayed though out the story because this was written after I found out. I know the tense jumps back and forth; it’s an artistic thing. Blame it on craft, all the bad writers do.
That morning, the morning after my epiphany, I decided to change the way I looked at things. I was still analyzing the events from the previous night. I was thinking about the doctors and lawyers, obviously they are better people than me. At least that’s what my parents told me as a child. Thinking about the more important people, like the actors and the athletes. Everyday on the news Julie Davis tells me that these people are more important. If she says it and she’s on TV, it has to be true. So if I was sitting in the same shit hole condition as the better, more important people, and they’re just as helpless as me, then I’m equal to them. Traffic jams are humbling and they level the playing field, if only for an hour.
So what do I do now? I’m still pissed about missing the ‘Rebel Billionaire’ and want to tell Phil Garza he’s a prick. But what I’m thinking is that he probably loves the hate mail. Hate is such a stronger emotion, harder to command. I can always tell someone everything they want to hear and have them fall in love with me but hate is much harder. It’s easy to have someone say, “Yeah, I don’t really like that guy,” but to have someone say, “I fucking hate that fucking guy,” that’s a gift only a few people have. Phil prided himself on having that gift. Hitler was much more important than Gandhi. Phil was the Hitler of the Florida Department of Transportation.
Here’s what I do. I sit down at the kitchen table in my studio apartment and start writing a letter to Phil Garza. I tell him how great he is, how he changed my life, how being on I-4 absolutely made me a better person. The United States was a better place because of him and if everyone could sit in a traffic jam orchestrated by Phil Garza they would donate $115.32 to charity. I told him everything he wanted to hear. Everything he had dreamed about since turning thirteen years old. In all the years working for the FDOT he had never received a letter actually telling him what he wanted to hear.
Twenty minutes after reading the letter Phil Garza wiped, pulled his pants up, washed his hands, and shot himself in the head.
Sometimes it’s the things in life you don’t have that wake you up in the morning.
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