BROKEN LIGHTS

Time for one of those cheesy stories that form the opening to motivational talks, or segues into long articles, or, I suppose, innocuous intros in the Big Book of Sermons.

No? They give them out at Baptist graduations. Apparently the section on Three Point Formatting is exceptional; especially the three Ps of perfect preaching preparation and practice.

I digress. Unhilariously.

Here’s what happened to me tonight:

I drove out of one road and went to turn left, forgetting there were temporary traffic lights up, just to the left of the T-junction. There was no way to turn while the lights were on red. Indicator flashing away in the dark, I sat in the mouth of the junction waiting for the lights to change.

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. Nothing. A car came beaming up behind me and waited patiently. Nothing. Another car flashed through the lights in the other direction. Fine. Still nothing.

Minutes passed. A third car drew up behind the first one behind me. Tickety tock went the indicator. The LED glare was still scarlet red, and unshifting.

How long do you wait for a thing that’s just about to happen?

On went the radio. Football talk. Off went the radio.

No traffic ahead. I could just nip out, surely, round these interminable red lights, couldn’t I? I mean they must be broken or something, stuck on red. Maybe forever.

Another moment passed. Another grip of the steering wheel, another sigh into nothing. My chest was tightening. I peered left. I peered right. I looked behind me at the trail of headlamps waiting for something, perhaps anything to happen. 

And then I snapped.

“Urgh,” I said to no-one in particular. I thrust off the handbrake, slammed into first gear and turned right instead of left, leaving those infuriating lights behind me, impatiently.

I wasn’t even half a second along the road when I saw in my rear-view mirror, the car behind turning left, happily signalling through a now green light!

“Oh that is unbelievable!” I laughed to myself. And exactly like life.

Told you it was a cheesy segue story! But life is like that sometimes: a fraction more patience, a moment longer to linger, just a microcosmic decision and everything could be different! How many things have I missed because I didn’t understand that the darkest hour is just before the dawn?

Loads. I could list them. But I don’t want to. I can’t change anything other than now, with a hope that the future might be better.

I wonder sometimes whether the probability of a thing happening goes up or down, the longer it doesn’t happen? I guess you could argue it either way. Flip a coin to heads twenty five times in a row and ask yourself whether the probability of tails on flip twenty-six is still the same 50% as it was when you started. Unless something is wrong with the system.

Broken traffic lights. Except they weren’t, were they? I just needed a smidgen of time, and a sprinkling of extraordinary patience. And that, a ‘smidgen of time and a sprinkling of extraordinary patience’, might just sum up a whole load of things in my life right now.

But I’ll save the details until I’ve figured how to segue into them from the Big Book of Sermons.