Tailpipe Sniffing

Usually when I say something in an open and straight forward way, it means that I am confessing. This is my confession for the day: I got nothing to write about today. There, I said it. I don't know how much straighter it can get. Usually when I confess, it also means that I have already thought of a good excuse! :D In this case, I was thinking that the blame for whatever I just confessed should be laid squarely at the feet of the day which turned out to be absolutely non-happening. If Thursday was the best "Friday Look Alike" day in the year so far, Friday was the "The Friday" Friday of the year. It was so boring and for so long that boredom itself must have been bored to have stuck around for so long. Poor thing. It seemed good to me: Lethargic Friday, with the prospect of a sleepy Saturday and stupor-filled Sunday to follow, resulting in a mind that shut shop early and hence nothing to write about.

But I had just one problem with that excuse. The fact that at the end of the day I am a little hyper-active sort of proves that I am a little far from being lethargic. This means that my excuse wouldn’t necessarily have that ring of truth to it. So I got thinking about my excuse. I had to find some reason for having a mind blanker than it usually is but still not being tired or weary or bored or stressed or anything else that might usually be expected to blank out the ideas. Then it stuck me.

You must have heard of the "Graveyard-shift". Well, I don't work that shift. But usually (there I go using that word again!!) my commute to and from my place of work happens during those times. That's because at that time I get a relatively free road to commute on. It takes me about 30 mins. Today, given the Friday that I was having, I thought I could go home early and beat the boredom. Big mistake. No sooner had I put a couple of kilometers between me and my office than I got sucked into what has become every urbanite's favorite pass time these days. A Traffic jam. In fact that one turned out to be the beginning of many more to come. And like the good citizen, and urbanite, that I am, I then indulged in the popular traffic-jam activity of 'Tailpipe sniffing'. It's also called "Forced inhalation of smoke and exhaust from the trucks, cars, bikes and any other fossil fuel burning vehicles that are being manned by idiots, masquerading as people, who don't seem to remember that they could turn-off their engines while they settle down to wait for a way out of the traffic jam" but I like to call it 'Tailpipe sniffing'.

Because of the traffic jam, my usual 30 minute ride became a 90 minute journey which in turn meant 60 mins of sniffing. By the time I got home, I was high on petrol fumes and carbon monoxide and dioxide and sulphur and probably a few other exotic chemicals that I am sure I can't pronounce. And after that, leave alone an idea, how do you even expect me to have an iota of an idea about anything that I can develop and write about?