Yellow Lights

He started getting the yellow lights on Tuesday
Tuesday he was on the way home
And he started getting them
And it didn't occur to him
Until the following Tuesday
When he had spent a week constantly being late
Because of the yellow lights

He was a man who would stop for yellow lights
He would stop for every single light
Because he remembered in drivers ed
That running a yellow light
Was the same as running a red light

...In terms of how much the ticket was

But then he was late for the movie
And Sharyl Ann was quite mad
Because it meant missing the previews
And the movie was lousy
Which meant the previews would have been fantastic

And he was late for work
Which wasn't such a problem
Because it was him and one other guy
Sitting in an office
Coming up with ways to advertise gum
And there's really no rush with gum

Being late for dinner at his mother's
Was really the worst offense
Because his mother thought he had died
Because why else would you be ten minutes late to anything
Unless you were, of course, dead?

So he had to run his first yellow light

It was...

Exhilarating

Not knowing if you would make it
Before the light turned red
At which point
You were running a red light
Which was not the same as running a red light
It was just downright RUNNING a RED LIGHT!

He thought that it must be a mistake
All these lights could not really be turning yellow
Just as he approached him

But even the light at the corner of Fifth and Fifth 1/2
Which was always green
Because nobody lived on 1/2 street
Was a definitive yellow
When he approached it

So he assumed it was life's way of telling him
That he needed to be a little bit bolder
In his decision-making

Because, after all, he wasn't getting red lights
He wasn't getting green lights
Which would have been most helpful
But yellow lights were sort of like a challenge

It was as if some greater cosmic force
Was testing him
To see how brave he was

And so he decided to be brave

When he arrived at Sharyl Ann's house
And she asked him what movie he wanted to see
He said--

'Sharyl Ann, I didn't risk a ticket to see a movie.
Now bust out the wine and turn down the lights.
We're going to make ourselves a magic show.'

When he got to work
And his one co-worker asked him
If he had any ideas for gum
He said--

'Why do I come here every day?
Can we make that a gum commercial?
A man realizes he's a wimp
And starts chewing gum?'

Then he quit

And when he got to his mother's house for dinner
He told her to put the pot roast in the fridge
He was taking her out for dinner

When she asked why
He told her that she had made him terrified
And now he was going to make her brave

On the way to the best restaurant he could think of
They approached a four-way intersection
And his mother warned him
That he was about to run a yellow light

He told her to relax
That all he got were yellow lights
And that you just had to run them
And that nothing bad would happen

That was on a Tuesday
And that was when the lights stopped turning yellow
And started turning red

And that was when the truck
Came barreling through the intersection
Confident that it had the green