37. Just another pothole

Life has it's potholes. Sometimes they are pretty insignificant and it doesn't matter whether you hit drive through it or go around. Sometimes they are significant enough to wish you hadn't gone through it. And sometimes you meet the mother of all potholes with her big pot belly right in the middle of the road, the same road you drive every day, and somehow you never noticed it, or if you did, it's significance didn't register in the "what to avoid" section of the brain, and you are plowing down the road, kind of wishing you were at home so you could finish the song inspiration that just flew in 10 minutes before you had to get in the car and you hit that mother of a pothole head on at 35 unapologetic miles per hour and just as you feel the impact, you know that your tire is doomed. And even though your car has "run flat" tires (you can drive slowly on them when flat), the tire is SO flat that you don't really believe that driving on the tire is a good thing.

Let's dissect this little acne-dote (yes, i'm mixing metaphors here - pimples and potholes, mere blips - one on the surface of your skin, the other on the surface of Mother Earth's skin).

Why this pothole now? Why hadn't you seen it before, or if you did, why did you not pay attention to it, or at least give it a thought such as "boy, I sure want to avoid that mother of a pothole." It's life. Most of the time, and I'll bet all of the time, the clues are right in front of our nose, but somehow we don't see them. We don't even acknowledge the possibility of their existence. And eventually, that part of us inside that needs us to see that pothole, will guide your car right smack dab in the middle of it. Makes quite an impression. Yes indeedy.

The interesting thing here, is how did I manage to miss that pothole every other day? I mean, it was big! HUGE! Wildlife could live there -- ok, maybe a few frogs.  What road had I been driving, or gliding over, so that I never even thought that such a hole existed? So the pothole steps up and shakes me, literally, out of my trajectory. The road that is everyday traveled turns mystically into the road never before traveled.

Regardless of how I could be so oblivious, it's just a pothole. And now I'm awake instead of sleeping at the wheel.

Thanks Mom (mother of potholes)