Trucks Have Feelings, Too

Perhaps one of the most exciting events in a teenager's life is that magical day when they receive their driver's license. It's like they're handed the keys to the kingdom of freedom and independence ... they have finally arrived in the faraway land of adulthood, and they flipping can't wait to hop in the car and go careening down the road of life. I find it so interesting that the event many teenagers consider to be the greatest they've experienced in their lives up to that point is the one rite of passage that most parents dread and try to delay as long as they possibly can. I'm totally sure I'm not the only one who remembers taking the driving test all those years ago ... I'm also relatively sure I'm the only person on earth who had to take that test in a lime green pickup truck. That's right ... my dad make me take the driving part of the test in his truck ... his disgustingly ugly lime green pickup truck. It would have been way too easy to let me drive Mom's sporty little Honda Accord to the testing facility ... no, no ... Daddy insisted I drive the truck we are referred to as "The Vomit Green Special."

One of the guys who lives in the rental house next door to me drives a pickup truck, and he always parks the truck on the street in front of his house facing toward the trail where Ollie and I go for walks. That means I see the back of the truck as we are heading out for our walk and I see the front of the truck as we head back home. I can't begin to tell you what make or model the truck is nor can I tell you exactly what color it is ... the best I can come up with is it's a big truck and it's a dark color. I've walked back and forth past that truck tons of times ... I should know what kind of truck it is and I should most certainly know what color it is, but I don't know either of those things. You know why I don't know those very basic facts about the truck? Because the only thing I see every time I pass that truck is the license plate ... out of all the things I could and should notice about that truck, all I see is the license plate. And the reason I see that license plate and nothing else is because it's a personalized tag ... a personalized tag that has haunted me since the first time I saw it. There's only one word on the plate and it's a real word, not one of those combination letters and numbers deals that takes a rocket scientist to decipher what it means.

Tonight when Ollie and I turned the corner and headed up our street, I once again saw the truck with its license plate staring back at me. I stopped and stared at the plate, and that's when it hit me ... what if people had to wear license plates? Not an actual license plate but some sort of identifier ... a visible and tangible method of identifying how we are feeling or what we are thinking. What if the person sitting next to you on the bus had a personalized license plate around their neck that said "AFRAID"? What if a cashier at Walmart had one that said "BROKEN"? What if an elderly man at the doctor's office had a plate that said "DYING"? What if a person in your office was wearing a license plate that said "OUTSIDER"? What if a friend's plate said "UNTRUSTWORTHY"? I wonder if we would treat each other differently ... I wonder if we would take better care of each other? I wonder if we would listen more ... honor more ... respect more ... give more ... love more? I wonder if we would be less judgmental ... less gossipy ... less hateful ... less jealous ... less petty? I wonder if we would finally get it ... if we would finally learn ... if we would finally understand?

The license plate on my neighbor's truck is a daily reminder to me ... it reminds me to look deeper into the eyes of the person who's talking to me ... it reminds me to pray for all the lonely people in the world ... it reminds me to pay attention to what isn't said (maybe even more than what is) ... it reminds me that every single person has feelings and emotions that need to be seen and heard ... it reminds me that we're all trucks in one way or another and that trucks have feelings, too.

Pay attention to the people around you and take a long, hard look at their license plate ... remember that trucks have feelings, too ... every make, every model, every color, every size ... trucks have feelings, too, friends ... trucks have feelings, too.