motorcycle drive by

On any given Saturday night in my "past life," I was having the time of my life. Last year at this time, I was probably drunk. Or dancing. Or both.

Now it's 1:15 a.m. and I'm alone and so not tired. Usually I'll sit outside and admire the clear view of the sky I get from my driveway. I lie down on the pavement and wonder why people pave driveways in the first place. I also hope no animals come and startle me. I got home from work after drinking a beer with a co-worker. It was not that busy of a shift despite the fact that the streets were packed with people visiting for the weekend; the marathon is tomorrow.

In the last hour I spent outside hugging myself for warmth, the only thing that intercepted the silence in my neck of Penn's Woods were the rumbles of four motorcycles that drove by. Thirty minutes later, my dad came outside because he had a fire call. He asked what the hell I was doing in the middle of the driveway, told me to go to sleep and said that two motorcycles just crashed in a tree down the road.

What's strange is that I swore I heard it. What's stranger is my lack of tears at the notion that I might've witnessed the last minutes of someone's life when they whizzed by my house going faster than they should've been going.