Photo credit: Tim Gouw

There’s a large intersection close to my house. I use it every time I drive to work.

It’s a long light. A long, long, long light. Interminable.

Tonight I pulled to a stop just as it turned red, and I thought I’d time that unbearable light.

It held me up for a whole one minute and forty-five seconds.

Years ago there was a line in a novel I read – I think it was by Donald E. Westlake – where the narrator noted that a particular awful stoplight delayed him an “excruciating” forty-five seconds.

We’re kind of spoiled, you know? I live in constant, low-level fear that Divine Justice will teach me a real lesson in patience someday.