It all began innocently enough. Get up. Shower. Shave. No need for the 3rd ‘S’ this morning, or so I thought. Get in the car, begin the commute. Traffic seems to be fairly light today and I left home about 10 minutes early. Should make good time. Get to the 1-20 entrance ramp ahead of schedule and notice nothing but open freeway ahead. Cool, gonna make record time this morning. Hit the curve just before Panola Rd and the tail lights come into view. Lots of tail lights. No biggie, traffic usually slows a bit here due to merging madness ahead. Stop the car. Hmm, think I, a complete stop is rather unusual but I’m running ahead of schedule. All is well in my world. Hmm again, think I, we haven’t moved an inch in the last 5 minutes. Put car in 'Park". Stretch out. Get comfortable. Lots of emergency vehicles pass by on the shoulder. Why do they need 2 pumper trucks? I don’t see any smoke.
Radio Traffic Guy comes on and says a dump truck has jack knifed 2 exits ahead of me and dumped his load of dirt on the expressway. All lanes closed. (Why does he always tell me stuff like this when I’m already on the freeway and between exits? He watches my car, that’s why. Stupid traffic copter has a GPS on my Cutlass. "Wait…wait…hes’s almost there. HE’S ON THE FREEWAY - DO THE REPORT! DO IT NOW!). 20 minutes and 500 feet later RTG comes back on and says “You know that load of dirt on I-20 we told you about right after Doctor Jackson merged on? Well, turns out it ain’t dirt. It’s human waste!”.
Brain jumps to full alert. “Human waste”? Surely he can’t mean…? But they did think it was dirt earlier. What color is dirt? Naw, coudn’t be. Could it?
40 minutes and 2 miles later I arrive at the accident scene. One lane is partially open, traffic is getting by one at a time on the left shoulder. Emergency lights are flashing everywhere. As I get closer I see 100 feet of interstate, 2.5 lanes worth, covered in 8 inches of manure. Human? Who knows. I left my test kit at home. The firemen manning the hoses did not look terribly chipper. The next hitchhikers through here are gonna be in for a surprise, too.
The truck has been uprighted. It’s covered in doo-doo. Completely. Front to back, top to bottom. Trucks have bottoms, but I’d never seen one covered in doo-doo before. I don’t think I’d drive it anymore. “No, officer, it’s not driveable. Better call a tow truck”. That’s what I’d say if I were the truck driver. What the heck, you gotta figure he’s lost that job anyway, might as well tack on the expense of a wrecker. At least now I know why they call it ‘taking a dump’.
How is that gonna look at his nect interview? “I see your last job was a crap hauler. Why did you leave?” “I couldn’t do it right.” Premature dumpulation, as it were.
Of course, the rest of the day has been roses. When you start the day with a ton of shit, it just can’t help but get better.
How was your day?
