Green Lights

I spent several hours driving around Helena yesterday morning.  Under the best conditions, driving through Helena is odd.  The streets were laid out haphazardly amid gold rush mining claims.  The streets are more a tangle than a grid.

But yesterday proved more than an odd driving experience.

It was extraordinary.

I breezed through nothing but green lights the whole time crossed back and forth through the city.  I am not talking about two or three green lights.  I am talking about dozens of them.  If a light shone red as I approached, it turned green when I reached it.

I have never experienced such a thing in my entire life.

The more green lights I whisked through, the more excited I felt.  What kind of luck was this?   I found myself grinning as I green-lighted my way through town.

I began to feel as though a higher power was ushering me effortlessly from place to place?  To what end that?

Wait a minute.

My smile turned to a frown as another thought occurred.

What if my clear path through town was a bad thing?  What if the higher power was pushing me along to meet a bad end?  What if I was being directed to a train crossing or deadly intersection at the exact wrong time?

I seriously considered pulling off the road and waiting for a spell before I driving through the last two lights I needed to clear.  But, no, I took my green lights as they came and eventually arrived back home too early to drink a beer.

—Mitchell Hegman