'Nother Day

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

Thank God it's also true in traffic...

It is possible telling you any of this may change all of our futures in ways no one wants, yet I’ve decided to risk it. I do so because, eternally, most of us can’t shake the weighted blanket of regret we each carry, deep in our core knowing… that we are all just a lot smarter than what we let go down this upcoming day.

* *

Had I just felt the world, actually, slow down a little? Or was it the gravity of the news that Earth’s rotation actually was, in fact, slowing quite rapidly, apparently since 2:24 a.m. last night? Because I couldn’t tell. My news feed was saying that in a month, if the rate continued as it had for just the last six hours, we might experience as many as one and a half more hours, every day, by June. And that possibly meant, as some headlines were trying to joke, "A Whole ‘Nother Day"… in every day, two years from now.

If the rate continued… Surely it couldn’t continue. Could it?

48 hour days in two years? 36 in just a year?

“I thiinnnk I have to get to work” squeezed up from my throat. And since the clocks were already off by about a minute, I wasn’t sure if I risked being late or early. Ha. I paused at the familiar anxiety of Daylight Savings confusion. Then I hurried. Nooo… The only certain thing at this moment was “calling-in” wouldn’t be a thing. No way. This was a crisis. So regardless of whatever panic or existential joy I had to suppress, or whether I was late or early… it had better not take more than one of those precious minutes God or Mother Nature was granting prayers with today, for me to figure it out. Or the boss’ll be pissed, I thought.

The boss’ll be pissed.

Prior to that morning there were several phrases who, historically, had always taken the cake, so to speak, as the grand prize winners for famous last words. Yet this one, which had mostly resonated only mentally, for so many mornings, by so many people, in so many cultures, from rooster to the race home for dinner, six or more days a week, for at least the last several centuries, suddenly matured into a raspy, siren’s song chorus hatefully determined to dash humanity on the rocks of morning traffic.

The boss’ll be pissed.

Had we known how much restraint some of us would need to resist that false patriarchal earworm looping in and out of our self-centered minds we wholeheartedly believe we would have done things differently as a species. And it is this, above all else, that we hope you understand the most. And is at the center of why I am writing to you today.

The boss won’t be pissed. At all. Because if you don’t listen, and the right people aren’t helped to hear this, and You, and We, Us, on that day, again allow ourselves to harmonize this cursed, ignorant tune once more, in traffic, without preparation to adequately restrain ourselves, then the clogged arterial byways and soot-seasoned footpaths of city commerce today, we promise, will become the myocardial infarction the doctors are warning you about tomorrow. And there will be, quite suddenly, no more bosses left in our dead city-hearts to be pissed. Because no-one makes it to work that day.

I am sure I had the same underlying expressions as everyone else on the road with me, and, had we all acknowledged our shared plight, it might have brought us together in unified understanding and compassion. After all, people connecting in cafe’s and in parks, talking on phones, and even strangers bumping into each other on sidewalks were allowing each other to cry safely and muse at the miraculous changes afoot. “Would we have more time off?” “Would we let companies make us work more?” “Would food grow better?” "Would we finally get enough sleep?" All these and more were buoyant ideas being passionately debated in person that could have risen humanity up. While we in traffic, whether driven by fear or hunger, or the lie about our bosses, each isolated with a unique blend of confused, worried or bemused chaos, cut off from the world with news radio blaring in our ears, became clench-gripped, panic-faced monkeys incapable of compassion and patience. Especially those of us headed to jobs we must have sensed, more clearly with every passing moment, would never need us again. And so it came to pass that five small words, historically contracted to four in most cultures, The Boss’ll Be Pissed, uttered and repeated in virtual unison, became the reverberating mantra whose demonic vibration finally snapped much of humanity free from its rational bonds and catalyzed the sparks of traffic into a hell fire to devour the world. Even though Earth had only slowed about one minute and six seconds. At that point.

Friend, if this is the only thing you get from me, or if here is the only complete chapter of this warning to make it to you… please, without having to share all of the gory details, we, in the future ask, simply, collectively, for each of you to enjoy, whether you believe any of this or not, at least one, full teenage eye roll at the whole "boss’ll be pissed" B.S. before this soon coming morning; if only because it has never been a good reason to rush to work since the beginning of time to begin with. Promise us you'll do at least that.

To close in slightly other words... Yes, with one chance to reach across the divide to our past selves today, even with the Earth about to slow things up for everyone, I still hope, after distilling all the changes we could possibly help ourselves make, I have arrived at the one most effective single option: Finally taking our bosses, from parents to teachers to politicians, a little less seriously, with a simple eye roll, so we can all stop risking each other's lives just to please them by hurrying in traffic.

And friend, since you're still apparently reading, and that means, hopefully, this timeline is, truly, already in question, there do happen to be a few additional changes some others among us would like to risk encouraging.

If, of course, you’re game to listen any further.