This is Not Traffic

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “traffic” was first in use in the English language soon after the year 1500. Like it says: “The earliest English forms are traffykke and traffigo” from the French and Italian.

Now some may feel as if they’ve been stuck in traffic since the year 1500, but initially the word had nothing to do with being stuck beyond other cars, in part because cars wouldn’t be invented for several centuries. The original definitions were for “The transportation of merchandize for the purpose of trade….”, “a trading voyage or expedition, the buying and selling or exchange of goods for profit,” and, in a sinister or evil connotation, “Dealing or bargaining in something which should not be the subject of trade.”

It wasn’t until 1825 that it was first used in the sense we know best, “The passing to and from of persons, or of vehicles or vessels, along a road, railway, canal, or other route of transport.”

But nowhere in the nine columns of tiny type that defined “traffic” did I find the phrase, “stuck in construction in Nappanee.”

It’s finally spring, after a number of false starts and delusions. While we may not have had a brutal winter, with endless snows or breathtaking temperatures twenty degrees below zero. Instead, our winter was just grey. And long.

Now that it’s finally warm enough to go out in shirt sleeves, the farmers are busy planting between bouts of blessed rain. And, the surest sign of spring, construction crews are out constructing.

There are not one but two work crews along County Road 7 near my home. There’s a crew of humans stopping traffic, and some automated robot that looks like a child’s railroad crossing guard. The worst that happens is we might have to add a couple of minutes longer to get from point A to point B. Still, people complain about traffic.

Traffic? This is not traffic. My wife Jennie and I have lived in LA and Chicago. Traffic is getting up at 4:00 AM out in the desert in Palmdale, California, to commute to LA that in the best of circumstances will take two to three hours, each way, because you can’t afford a home closer to your work. It’s getting bogged down and moving a couple of inches at a time because there’s a fender bender taking up two of the eight lanes of traffic. It’s making your favorite part of the TV and radio you consume the traffic reports. And we’re not even talking about construction, which might take a decade to finish.

And this is the way it is every workday – for life. You get home so late you missed the kids’ practices, games, and programs. There is no time to do much except eat and get ready for bed.

Now before I get too judgmental I have to remind myself most of the folks who live here do so because this is where they were born. Jennie and I chose to live here because we know what the alternative looks like. We made a choice. But most people don’t know they have a choice. They automatically live near where they were born because they can’t imagine living anywhere else.

So just count your lucky stars that you were born here, and though you may encounter a couple of brief delays, the only time you really have to worry about traffic is when you go to Chicago to see the White Sox play.

See. You don’t have it so bad after all.