Commentary : On the Road to Discovering the Meaning of Life in Orange County

I was upstairs, changing. My husband walks in, dispenses with any greeting, and starts.

“Do you know how long it took me just to get from Fairview to Jamboree?” he asks.

I knew, of course. I always know.

“Half an hour,” I say.

“God, I couldn’t believe it,” he says.

“I know,” I say.

This is a conversation that my husband and I have a lot.

Only it’s not really a conversation in the sense that questions are asked and answers expected. It’s more along the lines of a mutual whine.

I’ve noticed that we are doing more and more of this lately, this whining, as are our friends. Sometimes at places like dinner parties and the like my husband even repeats verbatim his sure-fire conversation starter of, “Do you know how long . . .”

I’ve noticed that here in Orange County, this line never fails to elicit a response or even to ignite passion. Mention the Performing Arts Center and eyes turn to marbles. Opine on the plight of some endangered marsh bird and it’s time to leave.

But traffic? Orange County loves to talk traffic.

Bring it up and pretty soon the guy across the table is weighing in with, “I know. I know. . . . And do you know how long . . .”

And then when that gets a little old, the conversation will move on to how weird it was the other day when hardly anybody was on the road.

“Yeah, I know,” someone will say. “Same thing happened to me. A Friday afternoon. Go figure it. We got there early .”

All this road talk was rather new to me, seeing as how before Orange County, I had spent a lot of time in more compact metropolitan areas where others did the driving. It wasn’t worth much comment.

So being suddenly immersed in all this threw me at first. For one, I worried that it signaled a troubling trend in my marriage.

I used to think that maybe my husband and I were getting obsessed about traffic so as to subconsciously avoid discussion about any disturbing undercurrents that might be coursing through our relationship.

I noticed, for example, that we were hardly ever talking about money, or sex, or the various schools of thought on child rearing. We pretty well summed up all those subjects with either a yes or a no.

But then I got to thinking. What else do people in Orange County talk about? Let’s see, some people talk about sports. I don’t, but some people do.

My husband will on occasion engage in such prattle with the guys at the office. But no major league teams have the words Orange County on their uniforms. There is nothing uniquely Orange County about this prattle.

My husband will brag about the Atlanta Hawks. Another guy will ramble on about the Lakers, and then there’s another one who, regardless of what sport happens to be under discussion, can’t shut up about the Dodgers.

Also big on the Orange County conversation circuit, I’ve found, are astute observations about supermarkets, movies, what neighbors paid for their house and the quality of pediatric and veterinary care.

But such is not the stuff of what one could call a quintessential Orange County story.

You know what I’m talking about. This would be something like a Los Angeles story. The other night, for example, my neighbor was almost breathless when she told me a tale about her cousin who was dating some actor whose name I had never heard and who had a role in some movie whose name escapes me. That is a Los Angeles story.

Or a New York story. I personally have plenty of those to tell. Like the guy sitting next to me on the subway who disrobed completely while everybody, myself included, pretended not to notice. Or the other guy who stood in the middle of yet another subway car, on which I happened to be riding, and urinated. That, too, was a lot of fun.

But what does Orange County have? Sure, it has a few other distinguishing characteristics such as rabid Republicanism and fundamentalist fervor, but you can’t talk about those things in polite company.

(Not until you’ve polled the crowd, that is. Sometimes even weirdos can appear normal on the outside.)

So what we’re left with is traffic. You can hate it even if you love Jerry Falwell or you despise Bob Dornan. Traffic brings a sense of community. Traffic is so universally detested that in Orange County, it rivals talk of the weather as the great joiner.

In fact, now that I think about it, my husband and I feel closer to each other when we talk about traffic.

We understand each other when we talk traffic. Traffic is empathy. Traffic is love.

Traffic is Orange County.