So, I was stopped at a traffic light at Russell Street and East Avenue in Lewiston and I thought, Hey! Why not take the time to write up a column for that newspaper I work for?

You know how I value time management.

I wrote, edited and polished and got it just right. I still had time on my hands after that so I returned some phone calls — a buddy needed some computer help so I had him change his TCP IP settings. Jim Bennett was inviting me to golf again and I had to remind him that I haven’t golfed since the tragedy. My mother was out of jail and trying to stay off the glue.

I plugged a CD into the stereo and learned a second language. I flipped through a science textbook and figured out how to isolate an isotope. If I paid taxes, I would have organized my deductions right there. Days later, when the light turned green, I realized my hair was much longer than when I’d arrived, so I went to get it cut.

Argue with me all you want, Mario Andretti. I declare the light at Russell and East the most infuriating, time-sucking, pointless light in all of the Twin Cities. If it turns yellow and then red before you breeze through, I hope you have a lunch packed, fool. The light at that intersection lasts longer than the gestation period of an African giraffe. Look it up and tell me I’m wrong.

Teenagers who get stuck at a red there actually grow several inches and enter puberty before it’s green again. Couples have married, started families and divorced while waiting for that light to change. Word around the highway department is that the traffic light there is run not with expensive electronics and timers but with a sundial.

You get my meaning.

A few miles away, the lights at Pine and Bates street will also swipe a significant portion of your life. There, in the bellybutton of downtown, it is not so much a matter of duration as it is timing. That is to say, you will never pass that intersection and hit a green light. They are specifically controlled so that all drivers, no matter how they approach the intersection, will see the light turn yellow 30 feet before they get there.

In the context of trying to drive without stopping, is there any color so despicable as yellow?

This light is a block away from the newspaper so I’ve had ample opportunity to study it. I will creep out of the paper slathered in camouflage paint. I will elbow-crawl into a bush and peer out cautiously so as not to attract attention to the hunch-backed freak who controls the traffic light. And I will see that the light on Pine Street is solid green and will remain so until I dive into my car and try to race through it.

Bing! Yellow.

I have said aloud on many occasions that if something terrible were to befall the planet and I was the only person left alive, I would return to Pine Street with a bazooka and blow that fiendish lantern right off its wire of evil.

I’m pretty sure I mean it.

God help you if you live north of South Bridge and have a steamy romance with someone who lives on the Broad Street side of Auburn. Give her up and go solo, fool. You can’t get there from here. The lights in that nine-way intersection favor people traveling from Main Street to Riverside Drive. It was obviously set up by people bribed with L.L. Bean cash because L.L. Bean doesn’t want you running off for a tryst. It wants you in Freeport buying something made of chamois.

There is no single set of lights along Court Street that I wish to take issue with. That’s because I take issue with each set of lights along Court Street. The synchronicity of them was clearly designed by the same people who design laboratory rat mazes or those plastic product packages that can only be opened with explosives.

You might as well swim across Longley Bridge from Lewiston into Auburn because it would be quicker than getting through the 54 traffic lights that ascend up Court Street. The record drive from Gritty’s to Denny’s at dusk is 12 hours and was set by a team from Sweden who shaved their entire bodies to do it.

Back in Lewiston (city motto: We Think You Want to Stay a Bit Longer) a few traffic lights are set up just to meet quotas. They are really not required for traffic control at all. For instance, at Main and Middle streets is a set that will back up Main Street traffic all the way to Greene while giving the green light to a total of zero cars trying to pull out of Middle.

On Pine (street motto: Where The Hell Do You Think YOU’RE Going?) at Webster Street is another light that will always turn yellow in front of you, even if it is 3 a.m. on Christmas morning and there’s 4 feet of snow on the roadway and everybody on the planet but you is dead.

And you’d better stop too, sucker. Because the moment you try to slide through, a police cruiser will materialize out of nowhere, like one of those spaceships in the old Asteroid game, and the officer will give you a ticket even if you cry.

I’m told, anyway.

Other local lights that will hasten your aging process include: Lisbon at Chestnut Street (Chestnut Street motto: Who Uses Chestnut Street, Anyway?) in Lewiston and Turner at Center Street in Auburn.

I’ll bet you have a couple to add to the list. Tell you what, meet me at Russell and East Avenue and we’ll chart them all. Tap on my window lightly friend, and bring me coffee. I like to get in a nap while I’m there and I don’t awake friendly.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer.