One drawback of Facebook that is the “like” button exists, but not a “dislike” button. You can blow through and say hi quickly, even if you don’t have a meaningful contribution other than, well, liking something. Sometimes that’s all you have to say, you want to say, you need to say.

This part of the state is a huge, congested, house-to-house, strip mall-to-strip mall, highway-to-highway swath of sublurbia. Traffic is exactly the opposite of Facebook: we’ve only got a “dislike” button, and you can’t casually blow through it.

Not much of the friendly neighborhood “hi there!” honks going on; more the “wake up, snoozer,” your “put down the CrackBerry,” and the “get a flipping move on!” You can’t do much when you’re stuck in traffic if someone does do something nice; you have to “thank” people by waving widely and carefully, tapping your breaks in the non-get-off-my-butt way. The horn of “yay” can get lost if there is a chorus of “what part of GREEN don’t you understand!” drowning it out.

But traffic was high drama today; commuter vs nature again.

I pulled up to the light as the train crossing gates came down, and settled in to wait the crossing out. Depending on the engineer, the gates might be down just long enough to let the commuter train pass, or clog us up a while awaiting a late boarder, or because the engineer parked a little off.

As we waited, a small bird I can’t identify but looks like a sand piper (I know, wrong part of the country, five miles from the ocean) hopped off of the curb to cross the street. She walked a quarter of the way, and turned back. Back and forth a few times until even smaller birds, four in all, began crossing in her wake.

The crossing gates rose, and not all of the babies had made it across. Traffic to my right got the green, and an older sedan started slowly, quite slowly, watching to make sure all the babies would be okay. The SUV (driver on phone) next to him started slowly, unaware of the drama but unsure of the sedan’s motives. From her vantage point, she couldn’t see the birds, but managed to miss them, only scaring us by causing a couple of the little ones to tumble and huddle as we held our breaths, waiting for them to rise.

The birds got three quarters of the way across. Our light clicked green. No one in the front rows moved; the cars to the left waiting for the last babies to cross, the cars to the right showing solidarity. The cars behind us started honking, unaware of the real-time Wild Sublurbia scene directly ahead. We inched, showing movement while not actually crushing the birds. I debated honking to scare the birds on, but they finally crossed. Time for my “I like this” honk … but there isn’t one. But if you read this, white, older, east-bound sedan, and west-bound newer, dark colored sedan, I LIKE THIS! Bravo.

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