I had a small moment of celebration driving home the other day.
Driving north on Ward Road in the left lane, I crossed 64th Street and braced myself—
Huh. I didn’t feel anything.
This was odd because for the past two and a half years, there has been a nasty pothole right there.
People who drove through this intersection were so used to this pothole that most drivers would make a slight swerve to the left to avoid it. You knew someone wasn’t local when they plowed right over it. You’d see their rear left tire do a painful little stutter.
The pothole accumulated meaning over time through repetition. Avoid a pothole once, and you’ll never think of it again. Avoid a pothole thousands of times? That pothole will become a part of your commute, same as the stoplights and the turns you make.
Oddly, an absence becomes a presence.
I had honed my strategy for the pothole, a gentle flick of the steering wheel, before easing back right through the rest of the intersection. (No traffic at all? Stay in the right lane through the intersection and edge left before it ends in a right-hand turn 250 years later.)
And then, the hole was filled.
By a public works employee, no doubt, but can equally imagine some concerned commuter waiting until the wee hours with a bucket of asphalt to end the presence-in-absence once and for all.
I’m not that commuter, by the way—my relationship with the pothole was too complicated.
(Plus, I’m not one for vigilante road repair.)
RIP, pothole. No doubt I’ll see you again in a few years.
Taylor Coe 