A Very Big Deal

I stayed up late last night doing some freelance work. Not a big deal. I was happy to do it and happy to have the work. At 6:00 a.m. this morning, I got a text that woke me up. Not a big deal. I have the luxury right now of not having to get up and get going anywhere in the morning, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. Then I slept a little later than I meant too. Had lots to do today, but as I said, no where I had to be, so not a big deal. I got up, fed the fish and the tortoise and the lizard and myself. Made a cup of tea and hunkered down on what turned out to be a two-hour phone call with Time Warner. By the end of the call the wireless internet was working again. Last week it took my friends four days to get their internet back up and running, so my two hours, not a big deal. I got a lot of work done today. I soaked my sore, maybe broken, toe for a little while. I gazed out the window at the unbelievably beautiful light on the mountains just before sunset and wished I was a painter. I took a few not nearly representative enough of the beauty photos of the mountains, touched up my roots, took a shower, had a bite to eat, and then remembered it was take the garbage and recycling cans all the way down the driveway to the other side of the street night. It was already dark and chilly out and it's a long driveway, but not a big deal. I have a coat, and a flashlight app on my phone. Since I was outside anyway and already wearing my coat, I decided to take a quick trip to the grocery store, so I'd have something to eat for breakfast other than week old grapes. I drove down the driveway, made a right onto the dirt road, a left onto the next dirt road that becomes paved by the next block, and a right onto highway 62 heading east. A couple of blocks later, traffic came to a slow crawl. A traffic jam in the desert is a pretty rare thing. A misbehaving traffic light, possibly? A coyote crossing the highway, perhaps? A sobriety check-point, maybe? Whatever it is, not a big deal, not in a hurry, and chances are it won't take too long anyway. Ten minutes or so later, as the now single lane of traffic inched along, following the directions of the little orange cones that were leading us to detour off the highway and around the eerily quiet and now obvious but seemingly undramatic accident scene, I turned my head towards the dim lights of the police cruiser and saw it. A body, covered in a blanket, alone and laying in the middle of the two east-bound lanes of highway 62, just past Palm Trail. There were no mangled vehicles. There were no sirens blaring or lights flashing. Just a few police cars and officers politely directing the traffic and a fire engine or two. I don't even remember if I saw an ambulance or not. It was an oddly serene and thoroughly disturbing and absolutely heartbreaking scene. I turned off the highway initially to follow the traffic around and through the detour, but without really thinking about it, turned right instead of left and found myself headed absentmindedly back towards home. I drove up the driveway, walked into the house, made a cup of tea, turned off all the lights, and crawled into bed. I'll have week old grapes for breakfast. It's really not a big deal. Not a big deal at all.