cause= time

There's a tendency (I pause in calling it 'universal' although my huntch is it's just that) for us to wonder why other people are doing things at certain times while excusing ourselves.

When stuck in traffic, phrases like "Where are all these people going!?" or "_____(enter time) on ______(day)!? And it's CROWDED!?" roll off the tounge almost mechanically. It's as if the internal fool-proof scripts we've written for ourselves have malfunctioned in the cruelest and most unexpected way. Inconceivable! How could we be so off? And don't these people have somewhere to be?

Yes, presumably where we intended on going.

In my head, I demand explanations. I scan the crowd and wondering how it is we've all gotten here when everything points to us being somewhere else.

As I wait in the queue for the 11 am Tuesday bus, my mind starts racing with these thoughts. How can there be a line for a bus mid-day on a Tuesday? Don't these people have some place to be? Why am I there, you ask? I have an alibi. A perfectly good explanation for all this, as they say.

I was enjoying a three-day weekend when I was struck ill on Sunday requiring me to prolong my stay in New York thus leaving me to take the day off (from a job! A seemingly unfamilar concept for those lurking around the Port Authority!) and ride the grey steed back to our nation's capitol on Tuesday.

My stomach virus was not an epidemic. That leaves a lot of people here with some explaining to do.

As I crunch into the back seat of the bus with two people on my side, I bemoan my fate.

11 AM on a Tuesday?! Don't these people have some place to be?
-m