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For more than 20 years now, I haven't had to commute to work. I get ready and go to work by climbing out of bed and stumbling across the hall into my office.

Occasionally, I step on a toy left by a grandkid, stub my toe or trip over the dog. That's all the gridlock I have to fight in order to earn a living.

Being at work is actually tougher than my 30-second commute. When you work from home, it gives people the idea that it's OK to interrupt you whenever they feel like it. After all, you're not really working if you're home.

I can't threaten all of their lives. Several times a day, my 1-year-old granddaughter Ada Grace will crawl into my office, clutch my leg, peer angelically up at me, and say, "Hi. Ish. Cheese. Gah."

Verbatim translation: "Let's go sit on the curb, eat Skittles, and shoot Nerf darts at the neighbors' cars again."

But there are times when I have to show up in the newsroom, like when my editor summons me to discuss a column that made some person or group mad enough to forget their toilet training

These meetings are invariably scheduled in the middle of the day. This means I never really see rush hour traffic. What looked busy to me was considered by normal people to be an easy commute.

That all changed last week when I volunteered to take my parents and their warden (my sister) to the airport. When they told me what time they needed to be there — 8:30 a.m. — it didn't even raise my pulse. That's how long I've been out of rush hour practice.

I live in the extreme south end of the valley. My parents live on the east side. The airport is in the north end of the valley, but it might as well have been in Greenland by the time I got to my parents' home.

We fought our way 28 blocks to the freeway, playing bumper cars with people on their way to work. They did this while applying cosmetics, gabbing or texting on their cellphones, drinking coffee and — in one spectacularly terrifying case — reading a newspaper while he drove.

If you're male, drive a black Volvo, and made a left-hand turn onto 700 East from 4500 South Thursday morning, I'm talking about you.

Bad as that was, the freeway was stop-and-go when we finally got to it. We forced our way onto it and became part of the slow-motion lemming rush to the sea.

In 10 minutes we traveled half a mile, saw dozens of near collisions, two instances of verbal road rage and the outside lane at a complete standstill because of a cardboard box on the shoulder. Oh, and some idiot who appeared to be considering a merge under a semi-trailer.

There was no way we were going to make the airport in time. That's when the Old Man said something that stunned me.

"Hmm, the traffic doesn't seem too bad this morning."

I thought his mind had finally given up for good. Didn't he see all these idiots talking on their cellphones and changing lanes without signaling? Even when I pointed out the motorcycles cutting between cars, he insisted that rush hour traffic was normally worse.

I don't know how you people do it. If I had to commute to work, I wouldn't last a week. Less than a day of rush hour and I would be tranquilized, restrained and placed in an institution for the criminally insane — which is probably where most of you learned how to drive.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley. Find his past columns at http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/kirby.