Disturbingly, the sun has come up again, and people are taking showers, walking their dogs, eating Raisin Bran, and collecting their things to go to work. As the car departs from the driveway, the house echoes in pain. “Come back, come back inside, it’s not a good plan to go out.”

Highway 101 is filled with an assortment of vehicles each generally filled with only one person. From above the highway looks like a gleaming silver streak shimmering in the morning sun and from below there seems to be so much anger. Silver and blue and red and green and orange even pink. Car color choices are hard to explain.

I remember being in the car in the morning in my suit with my briefcase beside me that usually had a little in it but a lipstick, zooming across the Richmond Bridge in my little Porsche, thinking I owned the world.

Men would wave at me and I would smile back thinking how lucky I was to have a family at home.

Last week I was driving to visit a friend at a hotel in the Napa Valley and I found myself on the phone with another friend whose husband is quite sick. Apparently I was zooming along at 87 miles an hour in a 40 mile an hour zone. I looked to my right and there was an officer of the law standing on the bank, pointing what look like a large circular telescopic like machine which felt like a gun that would explode and I would be a particle. This is how I think nowadays. Anyway, before I knew it there he was behind me with his flashing lights and his giant four wheeler car. I pulled over to the side, knowing what would happen. Officer Reggio asked if I knew what I had done wrong. I said “In which case”?

There’s a long list of what I’ve done wrong in life. Somehow, I found this hysterically funny and actually he did too. We talked for about 30 minutes there on the side of the road. His family was originally from Italy and they had lived in the valley for many years. He had two children and a lovely wife and really enjoyed his job. He was one of the kindest people. He told me he’d never been to New England and so I invited him to visit me. He kept apologizing for having to give me a ticket and I told him it was his job and of course he had to. In the end of our conversation, not surprisingly we were both in tears. We were talking about the state of the world and how things had changed from early times and how worried we were about the future. He about his children and me about my grandchildren.

Talking to strangers is something that I do often. I always find it uplifting. No matter how mean someone seems to be they don’t really want to be that way for the most part so when someone reaches out to them and is kind everything changes for both people.

I may be one of the last people in the world that actually enjoys going to traffic school.