I live in West Bath and work at the Boothbay Register five days a week, which requires me to drive through Bath, over the Kennebec River and back, where the viaduct leading from the bridge to Route One has been torn down. Reconstruction of the new viaduct is scheduled to be finished around Memorial Day. I haven’t had a problem driving toward the Harbor. I have, however, encountered waits averaging 10 minutes driving back to Bath. My brain covers a lot of topics while I wait. To this end, I offer up ten thoughts I had while waiting on Nov. 23. This is my brain on the bridge.

1. I wonder if Ricky Martin is still living “la vida loca.” I think he has twins. That would knock the “loca” out of anyone.
2. The Kennebec River is wide. I cannot get o’er.
3. Those vehicles in the passing lane will get to the end of the bridge and then merge into the through traffic. I don’t know as I like the merge thing. We in the right lane get a raw deal. If I feel that way, why am I in the right lane?
   
4. The towers on the old Carlton Bridge loom over all of us. I climbed to the top of those towers with friends who were nothing but trouble. I looked down at the Kennebec, afraid my glasses would fall off. If they had, I would have had to fall after them, because my mother would have killed me.
5. The truck blocking my view has two blue square panels on the top half of the back. They look like they said something, once. I wonder what they said.
6. I don’t know much about the Kennebec River. I lived beside it all through my childhood. It was polluted then.
7. My sister and her friends, who were more nothing-but-trouble than mine, once walked the railroad track under the Carlton Bridge from Bath to Woolwich. I cannot fathom looking down at the roiling river and being able to move. I would have had a ”Stand By Me” freeze-in-place moment, for sure.
8. My parents walked “You Kids,” the collective name for my my brothers, my sister, and me, across the Carlton Bridge once, to get ice cream in Woolwich. We kids were so scared. We would run a little bit, giggle, stop, and hop forward. We stayed as far away from the railing as possible, because what if it gave way and we tumbled into the river? We had a better chance of bumbling into the traffic right beside us, but that never occurred to us. Or, evidently, to our parents.
9. One morning I was walking through Bath City Park when I spied, coming up the river, a tall ship with sailors standing like stone flags all along the spars. The sun gilded the ship and sailors gold. The only sound I remember was the ship’s prow cutting like soft butter through the river.
10. Does Ricky Martin have twins?