DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

People who know me know I rarely go anywhere. Local friends still tease me about something I said a few years ago, only partly in jest, that most days the furthest I got from the house was to the end of the driveway to get the mail. That was one of the few tasks of an average day that required me to don shoes.

My life is not so home-centric any longer, because I get out to the gym at least three days a week, and to breakfast twice a month. Still, I don’t do what most people do all the time, which is drive to work.

Occasionally there is a need for me to be somewhere in person. Sometimes the prospect of becoming presentable and driving 60-100 miles is attractive, as a change of pace and an opportunity to get stuck in traffic three times in three hours, suck down some exhaust fumes, and at the end sit through a meeting that, if its essence were bottled, would outsell Sominex at 24-hr drug emporia. But, other times, I just don’t want to leave the house.

This week there is the added glamour of being able to tempt the fates. Will someone blow up the bridge just before I get there? While I’m on it? Or after I’ve crossed, to leave me stranded in a city of terror-crazed maniacs until I’m able to cross two more bridges in a grand loop that might, a half-day later, lead back home, assuming no more airliners have fallen from the sky?

So I did cross the bridge today, although not near rush hour and therefore not, as far as anyone can say, with much risk, aside from the usual risk that someone coming the other way will dribble some cereal on his tie, or cut himself while he’s shaving, and in a spasm of shock, cross the centerline to mow down the first four or five other commuters who serve to slow him down. But that risk is somehow easier to accept — after all, those guys don’t mean to kill anyone. They’re just trying to groom, or finish their breakfasts.