Soundtrack to Mary

I know that some people commute many more miles to work than I do and they don’t seem at all put out by it. But to me sometimes it feels like I work in a whole other state or even galaxy. I contemplate the frequent flyer miles I’ve accumulated. I gas up, load the car with supplies and mentally prepare to travel a long, long distance. For I work in downtown St. Paul. For a South Murderapolis gal this is a road trip.
When I first began my daily trek to the land of windbreakers and hockey, I noticed that an unusually large cross section of the driving population travels east on I-94 with an open flatbed truck filled with small, jagged rocks. Naturally, I am always behind this person and their load of missile-like debris. Crossing the river, I start fumbling in my purse for my passport, panicking, “Wait! Are all of my booster shots current? Did I ask someone to bring in my mail and feed my cats?” I do love that this ride provides me with consistent random visuals. One day I found myself traveling behind a rusted-out beater, a huge Lincoln Continental with a mattress precariously tied to its roof. If the driver swerved the tiniest bit within his lane, the Posturpedic shuddered from one side to the other, threatening at any moment to fly off into my windshield. When I made it to the next lane to pass, I saw that the driver was a woman in her early hundreds. I thought about her all day.
It’s natural for the occasional bug to meet his maker by splatting on your car windows, but birds? Is this a St. Paul thing? This has happened to me many times, most memorably the time that I noticed a large, blackish cluster of twigs stuck in one of the wipers. Only when I turned them on to shake it off did I realize it was a hummingbird! I figure I had probably concussed his little head as it dragged back and forth before my very eyes, and now I was so freaked out I just wanted this thing off my windshield. So I turned the wipers on “high,” said a quick bird prayer, and flung that sucker into the St. Paul vortex.
Email Mary at popularcreeps at yahoo.com.