Big Time Truckin: True Trucking Stories
Dispatch 12: I Get Told Things
by Kirk Gonnsen
I am a truck driver.
I am a writer.
I get told things.
My company told me that, "we trust in the future that you will oversee loading where possible, or scale the load before being stopped and receiving a citation." They told me this because I got caught in the Bowling Green scales 2500 lbs. overweight. This resulted in a Ohio citation of $180.00 U.S. but "as this is your first incident regarding overweight, the company will absorb your share."
AMEX told me "with the recent market volatility, more and more people are opting for security by putting their money into guaranteed investments like a high interest savings account." I don't have any money. I don't tell AMEX about not having any money.
DRIVER CHECK told me, "to ensure privacy, the driver will then proceed to a washroom or other partitioned area specified by the collection staff and provide a urine sample in the container. If the washroom is a multi-stall washroom, the collection may be monitored, meaning that a collection staff is present outside the stall the driver is in." It's good to know someone wants my urine.
The Malahat Review "regret that we decided not to publish your work." But grain magazine told me, "we are pleased to accept your poems."
She recited Shakespeare to me on the trampoline. Her, 18 and me, 33, her lips bussing my ear as she spoke, and perhaps it was the speech from Hamlet
"To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,"
... or it might have been something from Othello. Either way it was beautiful to hear, and I kissed her after she said the last word.
ROGET told me if "you don't yet have the word. It may be on the tip of your tongue." I would add "and what it is, that is right there on the tip of their tongue, on the tip of hers, what it is that you will be told next, what words will charge you and change you?" The form letters from banks and literary magazines will bury you with regrets, past failures, and thoughts of debt, while others, the good will of a company covering your ass, the affection of a young woman will keep your hand free of the knife that wants to let your blood run free until you are cold and numb, until you are not a writer, or a truck driver, and nothing more could be told to you.
