Confessions of an Intersection Gridlocker

We’ve never met but you know who I am. I’m even sure you’ve seen some of my work. Let me paint a picture.

It’s 7:56 in the morning and you’re running four minutes late. You’ve got three kids to drop off at two different schools and the line of traffic to the school is moving like a block of cheese through an octogenarian’s bowels. Your two oldest are bickering about the latest episode of Demon Slayer. You don’t get it. It’s creepy and dark and not what a twelve and fourteen-year-old should be watching but this isn’t the hill you want to die on. All of their friends watch Demon Slayer and you’ve decided to roll with it.

It’s 7:57. “Come on, come on,” you say to yourself. The light up ahead has gone through two cycles and you’ve started tapping your thumbs on the steering wheel like it’s a double bass drum and you’re Tommy Lee from Motley Crue.

At 7:58 your youngest pops off the top of her sippy cup like it’s a bottle of Perrier Jouet. You hate this sippy cup because the top always pops off but you keep forgetting to throw it away. Milk explodes over the back half of your SUV like a dairy-based IED. It is dripping from the ceiling. It is dripping from your two-year-old. It is even, somehow, dripping from your hair and down your neck. Everyone in the SUV is screaming but the promised land is within sight.

The clock ticks over to 7:59. There’s no one in front of you at the light. Traffic zooms crosswise through the intersection. “I’ve got this,” you think as you edge up to make a left-hand turn. The light is just about to turn green and then I show up. That jackass in the late model Mercedes who gridlocks the intersection all the way back to the Stone Age? That’s me.

And now. Your day. Is fucked.

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About the Author

derekbremer Prior to his life as a stay at home father Derek spent more than a decade performing public relations and marketing functions for financial consulting firms and found the job to be precisely as exciting as it sounds. When not tending to his wife or daughter Derek enjoys subjecting the public to his unique take on fatherhood, travel and animal husbandry. He has been published in Scary Mommy, Sammiches and Psych Meds, The Good Men Project, HowToBeADad, Red Tricycle, RAZED, HPP and the Anthology "It's Really Ten Months Special Delivery: A Collection of Stories from Girth to Birth.