A snapshot in time

Driving home from work yesterday. The weather was warm, unseasonably so for early October in my neck of the woods. I took off my jacket in the car, and stretched my arms out as I sat at the stoplight on the highway, halfway from home.

I glanced over at the car next to me. Large, burly man. Spacers in both ears. Tattoos all over both arms. And I thought. Well. I bet he's over there listening to something loud. On the way to somewhere interesting. Where no one will spray bits of cereal in his face when they talk. And here I sit over in my car. I have tattoos all over me too. But I am driving to a daycare with a fluffy pink blanket in the backseat, and an electric red Elmo doll on the floor by my feet. I am listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on my CD player and there is no chance that a bar is anywhere in my near future. That guy over there looks like me, but I'm not in that world anymore. I didn't feel grief, or even envy, just a detached interest in the fact that two people could look so much alike, but be living in such different worlds.

As I ruminated on this, his car pulled away into the turn lane to the right to exit onto the highway. And it was then that I saw his license plate. GRFNDOR. Heh.