A family of three, a father, mother and their nine year old son, had been on their vacation for about a week when they happened upon a traffic incident that had the freeway tied in knots. Traffic was slowly being detoured but the congestion was still awful. As they slowly worked their way closer to the cause of the backup they were able to see the cause of it all. A tractor trailer truck hauling a massive piece of tarp covered equipment was wedged underneath an overpass. It looked as though whatever the truck was hauling was just a bit too large to fit through, and that hitting the overpass at sixty-five miles a hour had wedged it in quite well. There were soldiers surrounding the truck and all types of people milling around, assessing the situation as cars were slowly diverted over a small ramp to the opposite side of the free way.
As they got closer a uniformed man came to their window and as the father lowered it the man said that they were in the process of removing the truck and it was going to be a bit of a wait. The family watched as a large loader was attached to the rear of the trailer and tried to pull it free. After about three minutes of pulling the chain snapped and almost tore a police patrol car in two. The man returned to the window of the family’s car and told them that it would be a longer wait while they got the situation they had just created under control. So, while the men on scene were trying to get a handle on the situation the family mused on how the situation came to be and what should be done.
As the father looked over the situation he said that they were going to have to either take apart whatever was on the truck, or take apart the overpass in order to get the truck out. The mother looked on and wondered why they would have to destroy everything to get it out. She thought that they should just chip away a little of the overpass to get the truck out. The father laughed at her and told her that if they did that it would make the structure of the overpass unsound and they would have to tear it down and rebuild it anyway. After about twenty minutes of talking the man came to the window a third time and told the family that traffic would be moving again in about another half hour. The father asked what they were going to do about the situation and the man responded that there were an army of engineers and military personnel that were trying to get the truck and its cargo unstuck.
After the man left the little boy who had been watching the situation intently climbed over the seat and sat between hi s mom and dad. He had been listening to each of them as they were talking before and after looking at the truck for a few more minutes he tapped his mom on the shoulder and whispered something in her ear. She looked ahead and then her eyes opened wide. She looked over at her husband and said that their son had just asked her a really simple question.
A few minutes later the man stepped out of their car and made his way over to the man that had been informing them about the wait. He asked the man the question that the boy had relayed to his mother. The man looked at him and then at the truck. He then walked over to a group of individuals with clipboards and all sort of computer equipment. He asked them the same question and they stopped what they were doing and took a look at the truck.
Twenty minutes later the loader was hooked up again and it was pulling the truck and its cargo free from the over pass. Fifteen minutes after that traffic was moving again and the road was completely clear.
The question that the little boy asked his mother was, “Why don’t they just let the air out of the tires?”
A small boy’s question solved a problem that a score of city engineers couldn’t solve given hours to analyze the situation. He looked at it from a different perspective.