Ever feel like a tire tread alongside the road of life?

Click to enlarge: c0 Tire treads alongside a highway.

(That's a really, really bad metaphor. Sorry.)

Ever wonder how all those tire treads wind up on the side of the road?

For years, US interstates were scattered with truck tire treads, imagined by my child mind (not yet assaulted with real images of tragedy) to be remnants of horrific 18-wheeler crashes, left behind after the twisted trailers and cabs had been removed and scores of injured travelers taken to hospitals who were only moments before singing campfire songs or playing "I spy".

Of course, the reality is less gruesome, but nonetheless fascinating. On a trip back from Florida a few years ago, I watched a tread detach from a truck ahead of me and snake into a corkscrew spiral, through the air and over my Rav 4. It landed behind me and came to rest harmlessly while other vehicles swerved to avoid it.

You'd think as common as the sight of tire treads once was, seeing them detach would have been common as well. Yet that seems to be as rare as sighting Santa on Christmas Eve. (Which also only happened to me once.)

[2013-03-22]

 

c0

Say something else in that ear.

"We don't kill each other over religion. Or color or language or borders or natural resources. Those are just convenient excuses.

We kill each other because we're different from each other, and that frightens us. Violence is ultimately a response to fear."
--Clarence 0ddbody

[2012-12-18]

c0