DAZE WORK: Playing the waiting game in traffic

You never know when the little things in life are going to get you (and your little dog, too).

The little decisions we make in life -- like me deciding to check the Goodwill store along Indianapolis Road to see if I could find a cheap skillet of a certain size (I didn’t but that’s another story) -- can come back to bite you.

I remember reading somewhere once that in rush-hour traffic, the average Chicago motorist can wait for up to two dozen vehicles to pass him or her before a friendly fellow driver waves them into traffic to merge. Let’s call it courtesy.

And so it was that I found myself in front of Speedway West, poised to turn out westbound onto Indianapolis Road about 3:30 the other afternoon. To the uninitiated, that’s about the time every factory east of Veterans Highway has let out or is letting out for the end of their shifts.

Random thoughts begin to evolve: “Hey, I know him.” Offered a little wave, got no response. How is it we have some many white cars and pickup trucks in Greencastle? Did York Automotive have a January white sale? Ha! I can only laugh since the situation has gone from sublime to ridiculous and sinking fast with the passage of at least a dozen vehicles thus far.

Nobody’s making eye contact as they creep past now, not wanting to be that guy who slows to let another car get into an already too-long line of traffic.

I’m thinking to myself maybe I should just slam the Jeep in reverse and turn around in the Speedway lot and head out the back way via the Deer Field subdivision. But then I’d have to backtrack to make my appointed rounds at McDonald’s and Kroger.

Maybe this is factory traffic compounded by after-school traffic, I rationalize as more cars parade past. This is a couple Volkswagen Beetles short of a fair parade from where I sit.

Is everyone now driving east and west on Indianapolis Road to avoid going north and south on U.S. 231? This frustrating wait has happened to me before but never to this extent while trying to turn right out of McDonald’s onto Indianapolis Road or left onto Percy Julian Drive from the Golden Arches of Jedele.

Hey, now there’s a box truck waiting to pull out of another of the myriad of curb cuts along Indianapolis Road in front of the old Marsh store property near Arby’s. If he pulls out, maybe I can use him as a moving screen and get out in front of him. But he seems more patient than I’ve been, waiting in silence, when suddenly I realize that he’s trying to turn left to go east. Good luck with that move. What did my Dad used to call them? Left-turn artists, that’s it.

Been here so long now that I’m going to need some more of that $3.69-a-gallon Greencastle gasoline. Why is it our gasoline is always higher than everyone else’s? All they’ll ever tell me when we try to do a story is “that’s what we’re told to put on the pump.”

Honestly I haven’t experienced such non-stop traffic since IBM used to let out at 3 p.m. and there weren’t any stoplights on Indianapolis Road or State Road 240 to break things up.

After what has had to be two dozen vehicles -- but who’s counting? -- westbound traffic finally subsides and I fall in line behind the last car. A white SUV, of course.

So if I’m still sitting here when you drive by today, honk and wave and maybe bring me a McDonald’s iced tea. Just don’t ignore me. This isn’t Chicago, you know.