The Goddess Speaks Betty Shimabukuro

Sitting ducks on a freeway, 1 per car

That's where we'll perish, in our metal auto-coffins, fried by alien rays.

This was the single salient thought I had at 1 a.m. last Wednesday, frozen on the freeway during the Great H-1 Crane vs. Overpass Debacle.

Perhaps it was the presence of Aloha Stadium, which, if you are hallucinating -- due to lack of food, sleep and bathroom facilities -- sort of looks like a UFO, especially if you've been stuck next to it for an hour.

In the aftermath, Gov. Linda Lingle admitted that the government had mistakenly treated the Great Debacle as a traffic issue, rather than a civil defense issue, and I thought, hey, so did I.

At 6 p.m. Tuesday, I was just thankful that my kids were old enough to be home on their own, so I could stay at work and wait out the traffic. Ignore it long enough and it will go away -- that works for many of life's problems.

So we waited in town, my husband and I. Got all kinds of work done, too. At midnight, reports were that things were still bad, but we couldn't wait any longer so we went forward into the abyss. Whoa. Red taillights to infinity and beyond.

The only saving grace was that he was driving, allowing me to fantasize about aliens for the three hours it took us to get to Makakilo. (We were actually lucky. The next day, I read about people who took five hours or more to get home. Sheesh. They could've flown to Los Angeles in that much time. If they could've gotten to the airport.)

I HAD one other clear thought while stuck on the H-1: We are idjits.

At the time I was reading "Peter and the Shadow Thieves," by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. It's a book about Peter Pan, which means Capt. Hook is in it, and his favorite put-down is "idjit!" As in, "Smee, you are a supreme idjit!"

Almost every car we passed or that passed us contained but one person. A few more, like ours, had two. One city bus -- and this was really freaky -- was empty. Not a soul aboard except the driver.

Idjits. I excuse the bus driver, who was just doing his job (although, why bother on that particular night?). For the rest of us, if we'd just doubled up -- or if we'd stop making excuses for why we have to commute solo to begin with -- the Great Debacle would have been somewhat less of one.

You can't blame everything on a careless driver and government inaction.

Which brings me back to the space aliens, looking down from their ship, ray guns set on maximum power. In sheer panic we will all be trying to run away, all at the same time, in the same direction, and we will forget, yet again, to carpool.

"Idjits!" the aliens will say, and fire away.