My perception is that I am the victim of a statistical anomaly: when given a choice, I end up in the slow lane more than 50 percent of the time.
In the checkout line. At the border crossing. In the freeway traffic crawling to get around an accident.
As I feel the frustration and anger of being in the slow lane yet again, I wonder about the source of my assessment that I am somehow the victim in this. That I am presumably entitled to be in the other lane rather than this one – or at least more entitled to be over there than the people who made a different choice. That my time is too important not to pause and take this opportunity to do the work of getting in someone else’s way – to be “traffic” for someone else.
Or perhaps it is circumstance itself that frustrates me. As though me being in the slow lane more often than not is the one anomaly to the otherwise reliable experience of a fair world.
Perhaps I am angry at myself for having a statistically improbable tendency to choose the wrong lane.
Meanwhile, the bald eagles perch motionless in the trees looking down on the long line of cars, and the blue heron stands motionless in the long grass near the clogged freeway, apparently quite content to be moving even slower than I.
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