Alto

When I was about 7 years old, I was amazed at how my father seemed to able to predict when the lights at a traffic stop would change. There we’d be, stopped at an intersection, waiting at a red light. After some time, my father would call up first gear and start to disengage the parking brake. “Great!” I thought, “lights have changed.” But I’d look up and see that the light was still red. Then, amazingly, it would turn green the moment his hand left the parking brake lever. It puzzled me no end. The only obvious conclusions were: 1) he was just guessing randomly but was on a hitting streak, and 2) my father had psychic abilities.

I found the answer a few years later. All he did was look at the lights perpendicular to our stop; when its yield light came on, red was sure to come after 2 or 3 seconds. Red for them, of course, meant green for us.

I’d like to strike up an analogy and make sense of my discovery. Waiting at a traffic stop is a “stop”, like some massive dilemma, in life’s journey. One sometimes has to look in different places, not only straight ahead, for the answers.

For sure, you now have no doubt that I am the deep, analytic, and reflective type. Yes, I admit, that’s what I am. I am also into painting, photography, deep-sea diving, and poetry. If you liked what you just read, be on the lookout for my first book, “Let Me Help You Help You” . It’s a compilation of events in my life, like what you have just read, and my reflections on them. If you’d like share your story and have me mock your experience by pretending to care, write to here2listen@sshole.com.