Metaphor

Tonight, as I left from my friend's home at 1:30AM, my car began playing the CD that was currently loaded into its deck. My immediate desire was to put on a similar song which I really enjoy listening to, and so, as I turned out of the development, I reached in the pocket on my driver's side door and started blindly pulling out CD's in the dark. Immediately I realized that I couldn't really see what was written on each CD (all my CD's are burned). My two thoughts here were firstly that I could wait until I passed under the streetlight ahead and glance quickly at the CD I was holding, and secondly that this process was quickly becoming far more complex than I wanted.

I read the first CD under the first streetlight, and the second one under the second, and so on. After the fourth light, I realized that I was searching for one CD in a stack of about ten, and that there were maybe four more streetlights. Again, I had two thoughts; firstly, that I could slow down and try to read two CD's back to back under each streetlight, or I could hold a CD in each hand as I passed under the streetlight, and secondly whether or not I had an odd number of CD's remaining, and if I should adjust my strategy accordingly.

Upon reaching the last stoplight, I had not found my CD, both because it was too difficult to read two CD's during each stoplight, and because there were actually more like fifteen or so CD's. Still though, there were only 2 CD's left that I had not checked, so I could go by process of elimination, and simply try them both. On the other hand, I found myself singing along to the song that was already playing, so much so that I decided to just listen to the currently playing song. It was a song that I generally don't listen to on that particular CD, but somehow a minute of not really listening bought my interest.

After that song ended, there was a single streetlight at a stop-sign intersection with a mile of dark farm fields before and after. In that one moment of light, I confirmed that the very last CD in the stack was the one I was searching for. As the next track in the current CD came on, I wondered if maybe I should just let it play, despite it also being a normally skipped track. After a moment or two, I almost instinctively ejected the CD and replaced it. I had already skipped ahead to the song I wanted before realizing what I had done.