This is for you, Mr. Big Guy sitting in the passenger seat of the delivery truck.

Heading down the road, right elbow hanging out the window while the fingers of your right hand hold on to the top of the door frame as though trying to somehow steady the rudder of the rumbling vehicle. As if you could steer. As though you had some small bit of control.

You’re not reading this because you’re watching. You’re always watching from your vantage point, your crow’s nest, your bouncy bucket seat, like a kid finally allowed to climb out of the back booster seat to sit up front with the big boys.

You’re a big boy. But they won’t let you drive.

There’s so much to see from where you sit. Houses that you don’t live in. Cars you don’t drive. Stores you’ve never been in because there’s nothing in them you need.

You watch people on the street. People running for their health and looking miserable, moms struggling with rickety strollers that can’t handle potholes, kids walking in groups all texting each other on their phones even though they could just lift their heads and speak to one another.

You’re not sure where you fit into all this. You’re the big guy riding in the passenger seat of the truck. You’re not driving. You’re not navigating or communicating with home base. You’re just … there.

You’re there to help, though. You’re there to lift, to hoist the heaviest part of the piano up the ramp into the truck, to bring the big boxes off the back and up the stairs to the front door, to pull up the heavy gate or yank down the screeching roll-close door when one job is done and it’s off to the next.

You help by watching, too. Watching for corners, watching for traffic, watching for house numbers, looking for a place to park and have lunch under a tree.

You’re busy, but there are times when you’re in the truck, being driven, when you think about what you want.

This is not what you want.

Though it’s OK for now.

But you want more.

You want to drive.

Doesn’t everyone?

You want to move your own furniture. You want to deliver your own packages. You want to carry in boxes and boxes of food to your own house and your own family and tell them, “This is for us. This is ours.”

Everybody feels that way, you know. Everybody knows what it’s like to sit in the passenger seat. Everyone knows what it’s like to lift things that aren’t theirs, to carry things just because you’re told, to be responsible for making sure the fenders don’t get scraped on tight corners even though you’re not the one who’s making the turn. You are you, Mr. Big Guy in the passenger seat of the truck, but you are also us and you are also a metaphor.

Don’t give up the dream, Mr. Big Guy. You will drive one day. Don’t miss your chance.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com