Traffic

by Alexandre Groisman
(Brasil)

It all started when I went to Naomi’s party. It was a Friday afternoon in the year of 2009.
The party was supposed to go from four through eight p.m but since the party wasn't getting any better I had decided to leave at six. When I got in the car it was burning hot and I was sweating from all the running, chasing, dancing, jumping and all of that stuff that kids love to do. When I tried to turn on the air conditioner,guess what happened, yeah that's right it wasn’t working. Just like in the movies when you need something or you need to do something, and then everything goes wrong. but in the movies it gets better after Thirty minutes or one hour but it took hours to get better.

So my driver is there driving the car in Sao Conrado, a neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro,
calmly until we reach the traffic. I started losing my mind because it was so hot and the air
wasn’t working. My feet were sore,and I had a headache since the other drivers were honking
non-stop, it is one of the worst feelings a human can have. So I had to face it,I was going
to melt down and turn into water then evaporate. So I decided to go backseat and try to
sleep, but of course I couldn't because the heat was too strong.

Now comes the worst part, my driver and I were inside the tunnel, sweating like two freaks that just ran a marathon of 2,000 meters in less than 30 minutes, we were sweating in the neck, in our back, in our stomach, in our feet, our whole body was wet, but the only part that my body that wasn’t wet was my mouth, that was just like the sahara desert. I couldn’t handle anymore I pulled the window down to get some fresh air, but the window couldn’t go down because that car sucked so much, the only window that could go down was the passenger seat, so I went to the front seat, turned the the window up then came back. But try guessing what happened, it got worst because it was still super hot just like a microwave and now there was a trash smell inside the tunnel. I was literally was going to pass out, but i just stayed laying down thinking of all the times that trash car, had broken, been repaired but still didn’t work, and how long the air had been broken.

After six hours of being in traffic, we finally could see the dark sky just shining. I have to
say I have never been so happy in all my life. My driver decided to take the path through the
beach, and thank god it was empty. I jumped right in the passenger seat, I lowered the
window and put my face outside, getting a nice cold breeze, and there I was seeing something, the beauty of Rio, and then I understand why they call it “cidade maravilhosa” (wonderful city)