My dad shipped off to fight in World War II at the age of 18. When he returned at the age of 21 he enrolled in college, and then eventually went on to seminary. He worked his way through school, working long hours at numerous jobs. His first job upon returning home from the war was driving a delivery truck through much of the upper Midwest delivering ice cream to stores.
His dad, my paternal grandfather, had been a truck driver for that same company and had been killed in a highway accident weeks before my dad was supposed to have shipped off to war. Having lost his dad at an early age, I’ve always figured Dad was probably very aware of the responsibility that went with driving those big rigs, and the importance of safety.
One afternoon when I was about 10 I was riding along in the car with my dad while he ran some errands. We were driving along a bumpy country road when a paper bag blew across the road up ahead of us and got snagged on some sagebrush to the side of the road.
Dad started to tell me a story about one summer evening shortly after he had returned from the war. He said he’d been driving a long, deserted stretch of road in northern Iowa. He’d had a long day, and he was making his way home having just made his final delivery for the day.
Up ahead, in the middle of the road, he saw a cardboard box. He explained to me that the box was situated perfectly in the middle of the narrow, two-lane road, not leaving him enough room on either side to easily get around. He had already worked a long day. He was tired. He said that he didn’t particularly want to take the extra time to gear down and slow the truck to a stop so that he could jump out and move the box out of the road. He decided to just hit it and hope to knock it off to the side of the road.
But then, he got to thinking. If he ran over the box it might get stuck in the grill of the truck, or hung up on something underneath. He didn’t want to have to pull over later and deal with a mess.
So, with a begrudging sigh, he started to slow the truck and gear down. He stopped the truck in the middle of the road, able to see far enough in both directions to feel confident that no other vehicles were coming along this stretch of road anytime soon. He opened the door and climbed down from the cab. Just as he was walking over to kick the empty cardboard box off to the side of the road a young boy jumped out of the box!
“Surprise!” the boy exclaimed.
Dad was stunned.
And that was the end of the story.
I remember sitting in silence in the car absorbing the weight of his story. He could have killed that boy. I remember turning to look at my dad, and watching him drive, continuing to look at the road up ahead. I don’t remember that any more was said after that.
Yesterday was a busy day for me. Too many things got scheduled into one day. In the afternoon as I was driving to get to a meeting for which I was already late I noticed a white plastic grocery bag in the road up ahead. There was something inside the bag. Maybe some groceries, or garbage, or somebody’s lunch. There was plenty of room for me to steer around it, so I was able to avoid hitting it.
And I was reminded again, as I have been many times over the years, about Dad’s story that day. And how stunned he must have been out there on that deserted two-lane country road when a small boy jumped out of what he thought was just an empty cardboard box lying in the middle of the road.
I imagine there was more to Dad’s story. That after the boy jumped out and yelled “surprise,” my dad probably admonished him and explained how very dangerous that was. He probably warned him not to ever do that again because he could be hit and killed. He probably tried to educate and caution. That’s what I would have expected him to do anyway.
But Dad didn’t say anything about that when he told me the story. He didn’t say anything about talking to the boy, or how shaky he felt as he climbed back into the cab of his truck. He didn’t say that he felt like vomiting the rest of the way back to the shop. Or that he couldn’t sleep that night because he kept thinking about how he could have killed a child that day.
I think he purposefully didn’t say anything more. Clearly, he’d wanted to end the story where he had. To make sure I didn’t miss the point.
And the point of his story wasn’t to warn me to never hide in an empty cardboard box in the middle of a road. Although I imagine he hoped I would realize that on my own. The point of the story was for me to be cautious. To be aware that obstacles and inconveniences are sometimes much more important than I might realize at the time. That things aren’t always as they first appear.
It’s been a good reminder for me over the years. To stop being so focused on what I have to do that day, or what I had planned, that I miss the signs telling me to consider something else. It’s been a reminder to not just plow through an obstacle that’s in my way because there might just be something more to it. To slow down when circumstances outside of my control are forcing me to slow down, because I don’t necessarily know the rest of the story. To be willing to experience an inconvenience. And maybe even sometimes to allow a detour from what I had planned.
That sometimes an empty cardboard box in the middle of the road, isn’t.
penniesonmypath 