car rides and conversations

We used to talk about snow cones and paper planes, now it's birth control and pregnancy scares. How did we get here? How did we grow up and enter this world of problems we never thought we would have to face?

I wonder about the conversations people have in their cars, those insular worlds that seem so private, but are really like tiny reality television shows with choose your own adventure stories attached to them zooming past your own car bubble. I wonder if that boy with the cigarette hanging off of his lip uses this alone time to listen to Taylor Swift, if that punk rocker is shouting out show tunes, if that blonde with Michael Kors sunglasses secretly loves System of a Down. What that couple is fighting about, what the old couple is sitting in silence. Why I feel the need to watch them so obsessively and empathize with people I don't know to the point of pain.

I nearly died on the freeway today when an asshole cut me off and charged me into a semi truck with a front grill like a T-Rex. But my little car kept me safe from the charging monster. Safe to scream out song lyrics and wonder about the morning traffic, who they are and how they got here for one more day.

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