OK. I think Apple needs to pay me for this one. I'm going to totally streamline their marketing campaign. They can fire everyone and just hire me.

Here's how it goes:

iPods Make You Happy.

That's it. Clean. Simple. I plug my new iPod into my ears and, presto. Happiness.

Picture this. Last weekend I'm sitting on I15 heading north. I'm driving a truck. I have to drive to Barstow, pick up two people from a homeless shelter, use them to load and unload sets to and from two trucks, drive down to Escondido, unload said trucks, and start setting up a show I haven't done in 12 years.

So I'm sitting in the truck, contemplating the glamour of theatre, contemplating this insane schedule, contemplating how I'm already about two hours behind, contemplating the crew that will be sitting down in Escondido, waiting for us, on the payroll... contemplating, bascially, how fucked up my life is... when suddenly the traffic TOTALLY stops.

STOPS.

Like, I look ahead on the road about two miles and there is no movement to the traffic up there whatsoever.

And I sit

And wait

And nobody's goin' NOWHERE.

Well, people do go places. Some of them, freaking out, take off overland and try to four-wheel it over the 100 yards of median between the southbound and northbound lanes. A guy in a totally trashed Camero pulls over and just goes to sleep on the side of the road. All the lanes kind of inch back and forth, closing up the gaps ahead, but that's about it.

We are STUCK.

My partner is in the truck behind me. I call him up. Boy, we're stuck, I say. Yup, he says. We are.

About a half an hour later, the red truck with the load of hay that I've been watching up by the bend ahead of us two miles starts crawling forward. This is a good sign. At least this means that somewhere someone is moving. So for the next hour the whole group of us, collectively, inches forward.

We see an ambulance, which is a good sign (in a sick way). This means we're dealing with an accident and not 300 miles of gamblers ahead of us deciding to go to Vegas all on the same weekend. We see helicopters. We see a crane go by. All good (sick) signs.

I watch the slices of life around me. Everyone in their own little bubble. The ancient couple in the old Airstream: she's reading the paper in the back and he's driving, because that's what he always does. The two dudes in the convertible Saab with the Illinois plates, pulling the top down and catching up on their California tans. The manicured toes sticking out of the passenger windows. Everyone stoically enduring the stuckness, in their own ways.

And it made me think about stuckness. How you sometimes just have to deal with it. Not one thing in the world was going to get us going faster until whatever it was cleared up. Not one thing was going to change our stuckness except time. So people sat and sunned and ate and argued and read the paper and talked on the phone, and just had to settle into it.

I pulled out my iPod. (Thought I'd forgotten the point, huh?) I pulled out my iPod and I put it on. And I ROCKED. I sang out loud, bouncing in the truck, like I was all alone in my little bubble. Love shack BAAAAAYYYYYBYYYY.

My iPod made me happy.

After an hour and a half, we made it through a hideous accident. I was late to pick up the homeless people. They loaded and unloaded so fast that we made up most of the time. The theatre people only got to sit around waiting for an hour. It was OK.

And no, it wasn't because of the iPod that everything worked out all right. Or maybe it was. Maybe it was just that extra thing I needed to get through the stuckness that did the trick. Whatever it takes, it's worth it to get through the jams and get moving again. And if you can do it with good grace, so much the better.