Last Friday, I drove home under the influence of eye strain.

I had stared at a bank of computer screens all day, looking for relationships, then questioning the validity of their existence. I was trying to visually verify the movement of something, something like a single pixel. I found myself asking questions out loud to an empty room, questions like, when a pixel moved, then why? When it did not, then why not?

Unfortunately, the questions continued after work. Why was I taking the same route home? Why not another way, a new way, just because? But if I had taken a new way home, then why not go the more familiar route? Why the new way, and why now and not yesterday or tomorrow?

I had a brief conversation with myself out loud. Another one.

“Am I insane?” I waited for an answer.

“Is it really as simple as Harry said it is?”

Nothing.

“Because, if sanity and insanity are separated like the words are, by just two small letters ‘i’ and ‘n’, just like Harry discovered, then I might be in trouble.”

“What if insanity is a long string of unanswerable and unanswered questions, like stepping from one room to another, then I’m there. Both feet are in. Where’s the dang light switch? What then?”

“Again with the questions!”

“Sorry.”

I drove a while in silence after the self-scolding. For most of the rest of the drive, I sat there like a doofus. Did I mention that I commute alone? Don’t ask why.

Then I convinced myself to stop worrying, and just enjoy the drive, and be entertained by the signs. As it got closer to dusk, so did I. (I don’t know what that means, but it works for me.)

That’s about the time when I saw a sign that read, “Told Moments”. Only as I got closer, it read, “Toler Monuments”.  Wow. A relationship. Funerals. Monuments. Told moments. A pixel moved.

I didn’t say anything back to myself, because I didn’t have the heart. Just after that sign, I saw another. This one clearly read, “True Blessings are Special”

“Yes they are.”

Only as I got closer, that sign changed to, “Turkey and Dressing on Special”.

“Yes they are,” I repeated, because, I didn’t have the heart to disagree.

Then out of nowhere, totally unexpectedly, I said this to myself: “I love you.”

“What?”

“I said I love you”

“I heard you.”

“Then why –”

“Stop. Just stop. No more.”

I became noncommittal, which disturbed me. “If you do, I do,” I said, “but if you don’t, I don’t.”

“Fair enough.”

I backed into the drive and got the mail. I didn’t say anything else to myself about what I heard and saw, because, well, you know, the heart.