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There's a line of paint missing from the dotted one that separates the two lanes of traffic.

I'd never noticed it until today, waiting out the congestion of the morning commute at the stop light near the corner of East Fifth and Marbury, with the Manetti deli on the right beside the coffee shop and Fifth Third Bank on the left, and the more I think about it the more enraptured I become with its simplistically subtle yet powerful implications. Equally intriguing is the previously mentioned deli, a family establishment handed down through four generations of Manettis to the current one: Rosa, the mother, patriarch Vicenzo, and their children Annetta and Antonio, the latter of whom is about my age and through his obsession with Rocky Horror earned the nickname first bequeathed by one Q. Tarantino onto a certain Antwon Rockamura. His father's surname is actually Matarazzo, and rather than being involved with the shop he is a local police officer--the business trickled down through Rosa's side of the family to her, and in tradition with keeping the store in Manetti hands she refused her husband's surname upon their union.

How curious that we find a woman unwilling to accept a man's name in marriage more unusual than those that cave to societal expectations and place themselves in a position of submission and inferiority. We so highly treasure individuality and living for oneself, and yet in this male-dominated society (we cannot deny that it still is) young girls are still expected to meet someone and fall in love, to have and raise a couple of kids, and often to sacrifice their own lives in order to take care of those of others. Career and self-driven women, though, have accomplished so much and become such major figures throughout history: the British queens Victoria and Elizabeth I and the "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher, the struggle of the American suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Stanton, and Alice Paul to obtain the rights guaranteed in their country's legislation that they had so long been denied. Should motherhood be seen as a challenge to greatness, then? No, of course not; a competitor, perhaps, but necessary nonetheless.

And whilst on the topic of love, I must at least for a moment address the rumblings concerning recent court decisions about how love and marriage can be defined; I feel compelled to ask--nay,beg--America to uphold its central principles of freedom and equality for all. Complete agreement is unnecessary, as I myself cannot say I completely agree on a personal and moral level, but as an American and a human being I could never myself deny others the rights that I wouldn't want denied to me, the right to fall in love with whomever I please, the right to live my life however I please and be happy within that life. Our existence upon this earth is far too brief to hold onto anger, contempt, and ill will towards others, and still calls come forth from the zealots, the moral crusaders, who protest that legalizing same-gender unions opens up the door for other godless acts--polygamy, bestiality, pedophilia--and they could most certainly be right. Is it fair, though, to restrict the rights of some based on the opinions of others? The mistakes of the past repeat themselves if they are allowed to, and in this world of experimentation, of trial and error, a great yet tragically fleeting game is played in which we touch God through the practice of humanity and democracy.

A number of questions could follow this reasoning, most importantly the plight of countries beneath oppressive dictatorships, and this argument could certainly continue to rage all day within my head, but instead I once again turn my attentions to the missing stripe of paint on the road. All up and down the black asphalt the white track runs in stark contrast, aside from the glaring bare spot so close to the intersection of East Fifth and Marbury, so out of place and non-conformist in a beautifully crafted, cookie-cutter town. Was it a mistake on the part of the painter, or was it intentional? Did he or she take notice of the unending crawl along the pavement, like ants to the call of their matron, and desire to give them a way out? Or are the lines just barriers boxing in the great metal titans that roar down the roadways day after day, and the escape is rather for them? Is it a temptation to break the legal restrictions set down upon these stretches of earth, to refuse to submit to the will of others by traveling on the wrong side of the road? The chances of catastrophe would be high, stakes of danger, death and misery put forth to play the non-conformity game, but all involved--the risk taker, the other drivers, onlookers safe on the sidewalk or observing from windows or doors of businesses and homes--would know that, no matter how fleeting, the integral support beams of the suffocating structure built for the good of all and, ironically, for the good of none, had been bent, perhaps beyond repair.

If a tiger loses his stripes, or never possessed them to begin with, would he continue to be a tiger? He certainly couldn't call himself a cheetah, a jaguar, or a leopard, for he owns no more spots than he does stripes. He would become a sort of mountain lion, though he doesn't naturally inhabit the cliffs, forced to learn survival amidst the rocky bluffs and accept those who had previously been strangers as family. How lonely such an existence must be...Is this the life of an orphan? Shuffled around like playing cards by an indifferent system, dealt with no rhyme or reason with their fates being left to Lady Luck? What a cold and cruel existence. I've had a number of friends adopted from far-off corners of the world, mostly China, who have never met the people who gave them life, who share their blood; a girl I knew in high school for whom this was the case once told me that, more than anything, she'd like to locate and meet her birth parents. Of course those who took them in, their adoptive family, are their kin, but I imagine that no matter the distance or the time, the fogginess of their faces in the recesses of memory, that some connection is still felt; and this is true of any child, all alone and far away from home, in a situation shaping up to be one which they feel they cannot handle. Why else, when all hope has been lost, would we cry out to the heavens in vain for our parents..?

What wondrous fancies this missing stripe of the road has spawned! Or like the tiger minus his distinguishing marks who is therefore no longer a tiger, can this passageway be any longer considered a road? Perhaps it becomes not unlike a hallway sans walls, with the wheels of steel giants rather than the feet of men traversing its narrow expanses...An automobile, a good woman to love you, and the blessing of the man upstairs. The American Dream in practice? Depends upon your definition, I suppose; sounds like something out of an old song, at the very least. So many concepts we have taken the liberty to label American, though they do not belong to us...We love magic and myths-cowboys and their modern-day trucker equivalents on the lonely roads, the Rough Riders, the Texas Rangers-but the hard fact about magic is that it's an illusion. Does that mean, then, that we collectively pull the veil over our eyes in order to...

What is this woman's problem..? It's 7:30 in the morning, she'll wake the whole damn neighborhood if she doesn't lay off the horn...Oh! The light's turned green.