...And Then the Beta Fish Said to the Rabbi

When I first got a job in Norwalk several years ago, I drove to work every day.  This sounds like a perfectly normal thing to do.  However, it’s not too smart when you consider the fact that I live within walking distance of the train station, and that for most of the drive to work I’m neck and neck with the train, as the tracks are parallel to the road.  Naturally, whenever I’d see the train out of the corner of my eye, I’d step on the gas and to my delight, my little Jetta often pulled ahead of the train.  Ha!  Inevitably, however, I’d get stuck at a traffic light and the train would whiz by, and just at that exact moment, the engineer would always sound the whistle, as if to give me an audio, albeit friendly, version of the finger.

For that first year, driving every day to work, only two things gave me comfort.  Strangely, both involved hand signals.  The first was the two or three times I succeeded in beating the train to work which resulted in lots of fist pumping and honking.  This was often misinterpreted by other drivers and resulted in several visual versions of the finger, in a not so friendly way.   My other comfort was my car’s CD player.  Thank God for my music, which made the commute tolerable.  On most days, especially Monday mornings, a combination of Iron Maiden, blasted at a audio level loud enough to be heard in Bucksnort, Tennessee and a large travel mug of coffee were necessary to wake me up and get the blood pumping.   Anytime I hear an Iron Maiden song, my hands automatically form devil horns, much like an involuntary knee jerk, as if I’m either rocking out at a concert or I’m a 15-year -old boy.  Naturally, the devil horns were often misinterpreted by other drivers, who at 7:30 in the morning were probably listening to NPR or classical music, and most memorably resulted in an old station wagon filled with Jehovah’s Witnesses following me for several miles, throwing pamphlets out the window in a desperate attempt to save me from the devil.      

At this point, you may be asking two questions:  Is there really a town called Bucksnort, Tennessee?  And who “invented” the devil horns sign that is a staple at every rock concert?  My answers are:  (1) Yes, and (2) Both Gene Simmons and Ronnie James Dio (may he rest in peace) claim to have invented the infamous rock symbol, but I’ll let you readers draw your own conclusions.        

Then, suddenly, my commute became a living nightmare – even worse than Gene Simmons and Ace Frehley without their makeup on.  To my horror, the State of Connecticut, after talking about widening Route 7 from one lane to two for the last 80 years, finally put their money where their mouth was, excuse me – they put our money where their mouth was, and conveniently picked that summer to begin the mammoth project.  Nearly every day, the entire road was at a dead stop. This was apparently caused by a group of DOT workers in bright orange vests standing around, drinking coffee...and waiting in suspense for the short guy with the mustache to deliver the punch line to a very complex and drawn out joke.   Now, this joke involved not only a priest, a minister and a rabbi but also an effeminate hair stylist and a Beta fish.  It apparently required the utmost concentration and the complete attention of its audience to be told properly, so naturally, the DOT workers stopped traffic in both directions so they could concentrate....until at last, the punch line was delivered and they fell about the construction site in fits of laughter, clutching their stomachs, hard hats cast off into the air in salute.  Those of us who had turned off our engines at that point and had gotten out of our cars did not find the joke very funny.  (I thought the Beta fish was severely underused)  The only other people laughing, of course, were the people on the train, along with the grinning engineer as the train sped by, the whistle blowing out of control.  It was too much.  I knew I had reached the edge.  I started seeing orange cones in my sleep. 

From that day on, I vowed to start taking the train to work.  It's funny how things change.  Now, five years later, I wouldn’t even dream of driving to work.  But I look back on my experiences driving that first year and I can really empathize when I see cars at a dead stop along Route 7.  When the engineer blows the whistle, I look out from the train window, smile and nod knowingly, flashing the devil horns.  Lately, during my relaxing and stress-free commute on the train, I’ve been pondering this important question – what are the odds a priest, a minister, a rabbi, an effeminate hair stylist and a Beta fish show up in a bar on the same day, anyway?