picnic

Every day I take the highway home. Four lanes of inconsistent speed and frustrated drivers just trying to get home to appreciate the few hours they've got left in the day. It's slow every day unless I'm driving home late at night.

Today something was different. Everything was slow, people were honking at each other, and even I grew tired of my air conditioner deciding to turn itself off. This is all the usual. What was new was the cause of the today's slowdown. Usually, it's a wreck. Sometimes it's just the natural confusion of hundreds of cars all with their own plan trying to be the fastest instead of making way and cooperating. Today, it was bears.

Some loud and careless truck had managed to lose a plain cardboard box right in the middle of the highway. In what I can only guess was the chaos of the impact, bouncing off a windshield as a car swerved, the tape could no longer hold in the contents, and stuffed teddy bears all in different vivid colors exploded onto the highway. When I drove by the incident had already passed, and what remained were bears - blue, yellow, purple, red, all sorts of colors, laying motionless on the packed road.