Waiting in the Park

This whole week I've been dropping my wife off at a coworkers house every morning on my way to work. She and the co-worker then ride to their job together... In the afternoons I get off a little earlier than her so it complicates things.

If I go home before I pick her up it means I've got time to fix a drink, sit on the couch, stretch my legs, watch about 20 minutes of The Daily Show on my Tivo... and then it's time to go pick her up. This is a really crummy option because my body feels like it's time to relax and settle in, but my mind is saying "8 more minutes and you have to leave..."

The other option I've got is to wait in front of my wife's co-worker's apartment building for 45-50 minutes until they get back. This option makes me look and feel like a stalker. Especially since there is a bus stop right there and it looks like I'm hanging around waiting to watch middle school girls get off the bus.

Well yesterday I discovered a third option... one with no draw backs... about 2 miles from the apartment building where I stalk middle school kids --in the middle of miles and miles of concrete and car horns-- I stumbled across a quiet, semi-secluded park!

It runs parallel to a creek and to get there you drive down a winding road covered in shade by huge trees that line the side of the road... the tress --the whole park for that matter-- don't look like they belong anywhere within 30 miles of the city. It was a truly amazing discovery on my part.

I pulled into the shade covered little parking lot where a couple of other drivers had an idea similar to mine; Park the car, roll the windows down, lean the seat back, drift away... I put on my kick-ass noise reducing headphones and let my Mp3 player go to town.

I remembered that I had a Rolling Stone magazine stuffed away in my back seat. I opened it up and started flipping through pages. I've always loved RS not for the music/pop culture info (although that is usually fairly informative) but for the fabulous writing... Well crafted, in depth, and just so damn good it makes you hate whoever wrote it.

Often times I've been sucked into a piece that I thought I had zero interest in, only to find myself pouring over the words again and again. One piece in particular that comes to mind was written a couple years back by Bob Moser.

It was the story of a teen aged transsexual murder victim named Gwen Araujo. The story was well written and that's what pulled me in at first... But what made it stick with me all this time was the fact that it was so damn thought provoking. It made me question and change views on topics that I didn't even realize were up for debate in the court of my mind.

Last month there was a true crime murder story of an Internet porn king... This month has a piece on Hunter S. Thompson that I'm itching to read... and of course a couple other stories that haven't made piqued my interest in the least bit --I've since learned that those articles are always worth reading as well.

I've had a string of very bad luck lately, but I must say that my discovery of the hidden park, and my subsequent re-discovery of Rolling Stone has me starting to feel some hints of optimism... and for the first time this week I'm actually looking forward to the long wait after work.