Here are your prompts for today from :
Write about a bad storm
talkative without saying anything
“I’m tired of…”
The kind of character who drives for a living
THEY’RE WRRRRRRRITE
Ed groaned as the 11 hour driving limit automatically pulled his rig to the side of the road and powered down. He was ten minutes from the warehouse where he had to offload. Ten more minutes and he could have emptied the trailer and parked for the night in a well-lit area with showers and laundry facilities. All because of backed-up traffic in Atlanta.
Only in Atlanta, where drivers were mostly idiots and the highways made no sense. It irked Ed that the laws passed by a bunch of legislators in suits who had never spoken to an actual long haul trucker could decide the length of a trip without any exceptions for accidents, traffic, mid-shift rest stops, or proximity to destination. It was bad enough when the system switched from paper to digital tickets; now the government used satellite technology to track every rig, issuing citations for going over the speed limit and shutting down the engine the second the timer reached the limit.
"Well, Peaches," Ed said to the Shih Tzu in the passenger seat, "this day just got expensive." The truck, now controlled remotely via satellite, pulled off the highway into a dirt lot and shut down. Ed looked out the windows. No amenities, no lights, no place to plug in. And to make things worse, he would be charged a day's wages for going over his time limit, requiring the remote tow to this vacant space. Plus his clock would reset in seven hours, meaning he would drive ten minutes to the warehouse, wait for someone to offload the haul, get that ticket signed off, pick up another load, hopefully close by, and then pray that the next offload was less that 100 miles away. If not, he'd start the whole drama over again. He rubbed the top of the little dog's head, saying, "I guess it's a cold dinner for us, Peaches. We'll have to pray the Good Lord sees fit to make the timing work out tomorrow. It could be worse. We could be stuck in California."
Ed was right about things being worse out west. Ever since the state governments of California, Oregon, and Washington outlawed gasoline fueled engines, truckers didn't work. Only friends of the politicians could afford the electric rigs required, so thousands of truckers were forced out of the business. Of course, the wealthy didn't see truck driving as a real job (only low class uneducated okies and immigrants did that kind of dirty work), so for the first year goods sat in harbors and rotted or decayed. Midway through the second year, as stores throughout the West sat empty of any imported goods, the governor of California took over the entire trucking industry and promised to buy the rigs, pay a decent salary, and revitalize the entire economy by a state-owned truck force. Oregon and Washington quickly followed suit. Thousands of hungry men and women applied for the jobs, but those that were hired quickly learned that the government did buy the rigs, but would charge the drivers a leasing fee to run them. Drivers had to pay for all the operating expenses out of pocket and every tune up, adjustment, and battery replacement had to be done by a certified specialist. No more shop mechanics to do basic maintenance. Drivers were still limited to the same eleven hour day as the rest of the country, but the trucks were slower and required several hours to recharge after every 800 miles. Those hours came out of the eleven unless the driver was lucky enough to finish a trip before a final charge. On top of that, the generous pay was in the form of scrip, useable only in government approved stores. As a result, the economies of the three Western states tanked. Goods still didn't move, unemployment was double what the rest of the country experienced, and the middle class vanished, leaving the very wealthy, the working poor, and the non-working poor as the only classes visible.
Peaches sniffed at the dry kibble Ed put in her bowl and looked up expectantly. "Sorry girl," Ed said. "It's what we have today. Look." He held out his peanut butter and jelly sandwich for her inspection. "I'm not doing much better than kibble myself." Ed put a finger of peanut butter on the kibble, which satisfied the dog.
Ed pulled out his gratitude journal. There were a couple of hours of light left, so he figured he could use the time well before going to sleep. Technically he could have started a new clock in seven hours, but it was only six p.m. and the warehouse wouldn't open until eight in the morning. Ed planned to sleep until 6:30 and then be first in line when the warehouse opened and try to make up for the losses of the day.
He started keeping a gratitude journal when the government first installed the satellite trackers. He grumbled so much about Big Brother that his wife suggested he start thinking about something other than what was wrong in his world. "For example," she grinned, "you're married me. No one else has that kind of blessing." He had snorted at the idea, but now that he had gotten in the habit, he found that it calmed him down and helped him deal with things like Atlanta traffic and bad timing. Two years ago he probably would have cursed Atlanta, cursed the politicians, and cursed the fact that he was a dang good trucker. He might have even cursed at Peaches. Today, he groaned, sighed, and chose to make the best of a lousy scenario.
Opening the journal, Ed took a bite of his sandwich and wrote:
Today I am grateful that peanut butter is delicious.
Today I am grateful for my silly Peaches.
Today I am grateful that I don't live out West.
Within thirty minutes, Ed had a list of 100 items, a satisfied belly, and a content spirit. It took less than a minute to fall asleep.
Oh my gosh this was so good, Stephanie, and very engaging from start to finish. I liked how you delivered the tension - the stressors - moving steadily over 3/4 of the article and then you threw in the antidote...a proven, good practice for better mental health: Enter the gratitude journal. (And we know journaling has been scientifically shown to bring the acceptance, the calm, the joy, the redirect back to gratitude for what's really important in our lives--especially in situations where there is usually nothing we can do about the stressful issues.) Oh and I liked how you really personalized the trucker's inner thoughts and adding little Peaches...well, showed his softie side didn't it? :) Well done!
Excellent, Stephanie.