Driving north on the highway to work early in the morning, I'm just one little cell in an artery suffering from some serious cholesterol buildup. We're all hustling past each other to deliver our oxygen all over this city, exiting the highway off into lesser arteries and turning off into capillaries until we reach our destinations, then traveling small paths on foot until we're spent and weary.
The lady on the news with the smooth voice drones on about the already mounting temperature. We're under a "heat advisory" through the end of this week. I'm trying to stay awake, trying not to think how I tossed and turned last night and hardly slept, hardly got a refill of the oxygen I need to carry out my tasks. A red truck that's seen kinder times passes me on the right. I must be going too slow. On the side of the truck, in handwritten letters on what must be a large white magnet, the phrase "don't take life so serious, it's not permanent" is scrawled in bubbly green and black marker. The man driving the truck has a cowboy hat on his head and a cigarette in his hand, and as the truck passes I can feel the bass of whatever he's singing along to.
At the end of the day, used up and tired and worrying about the next day already while I traveled back up the vein, was when I remembered the cowboy's hand-crafted message. I smiled.
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