English Original
If you have ever gone through a toll booth, you know that your relationship to the person in the booth is not the most intimate you'll ever have. It is one of life's frequent non-encounters: You hand over some money; you might get change; you drive off.
Late one morning in 1984, I drove toward a booth on the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge and heard loud music. Inside, the man was dancing.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm having a party," he said.
Months later I found him again, still dancing. "I remember you," he said. "I'm still having the same party."
I asked about the other toll booth workers. He pointed down the row. "What do they look like to you?"
"Toll booths," I replied.
"No imagination!" he exclaimed. "Vertical coffins." He explained: "At 8:30 every morning, live people get in. Then they die for eight hours. At 4:30, like Lazarus from the dead, they reemerge and go home."
I was amazed by his mythology about the job. "Why is it different for you?" I asked.
"I'm going to be a dancer someday," he said, pointing to the administration building. "My bosses are in there, and they're paying for my training."
Sixteen people dead on the job, and the seventeenth, in precisely the same situation, figures out a way to live. He saw not boredom, but a "corner office" with views of the Golden Gate and Berkeley hills. "Half the Western world vacations here," he said, "and I just stroll in every day and practice dancing."
中文翻译
如果你曾经过收费站，你就知道你和收费亭里人的关系绝不会是你最亲密的关系。这只是生活中频繁的“非邂逅”之一：你递过一些钱；可能会拿到找零；然后开车离开。
1984年的一天上午晚些时候，我开车驶向奥克兰-旧金山海湾大桥的一个收费亭，听到了响亮的音乐。亭子里，一个男人正在跳舞。
“你在做什么？”我问。
“我在开派对，”他说。
几个月后，我又找到了他，他仍在跳舞。“我记得你，”他说，“我还在开同样的派对。”
我问起其他收费员。他指着那一排收费亭。“在你看来，它们像什么？”
“收费亭，”我回答。
“毫无想象力！”他喊道，“是竖立的棺材。”他解释道：“每天早上八点半，活生生的人走进去。然后他们‘死’去八小时。四点半，像拉撒路从死里复活一样，他们重新出现，然后回家。”
他关于这份工作的神话般的解读让我惊讶。“为什么你不一样呢？”我问。
“总有一天我会成为一名舞者，”他指着行政大楼说，“我的老板们在那里，而他们正在为我的培训付钱。”
十六个人在工作中“死去”，而第十七个人，在完全相同的环境里，找到了活下去的方式。他看到的不是无聊，而是一个能欣赏金门大桥和伯克利山景的“角落办公室”。“半个西方世界的人都来这里度假，”他说，“而我每天只是信步走来，练习跳舞。”