Nothing is more conducive to a wandering mind than two tons of high-speed machinery.
Truth be told, a person with ADD has no more right to be behind the wheel of a car than a drunk. Case in point, my commute home from work yesterday.
I was thinking about how the eighth-graders I teach are funny and inappropriate at the same time, and how I probably shouldn’t laugh at their antics. Like during the CMT’s—a statewide achievement test students across Connecticut spend their entire academic careers preparing for all the way until the eighth grade and is, most pundits in the educational arena would argue, most serious business. Some genius in the Hartford schools decided it would be a good idea to supply each student with a pencil, a test booklet and a roll of “Smarties” candy with a motivational message attached. Along with the Smarties came snacks—on this particular day, bananas and milk. Josiah decided to crush his Smarties, line them up in rails on his desk and snort them with his straw. I shouldn’t have thought this was funny, I know—given the war on drugs raging in the city, coupled with the stoic seriousness of standardized testing. In my defense, I didn’t lose it until he set up a trail of banana peels moments before the test began, took a running leap and skidded into my whiteboard, then spent the next three minutes in a dramatic, exaggerated display of sucking in his breath, cradling his injured knee and rocking back and forth Peter Griffin-style on Family Guy, in the episode where he trips on a sidewalk after discovering the last scroll in a Pawtucket Patriot beer in a quest to earn a tour of the brewery. This of course made me think of Seth MacFarlane, and how American dreamy it is that someone went from animated film to world domination. My mind journeyed on to how he graduated from the Kent School in the class of ’91—the year I graduated high school and from the very same state—and how if only my parents raised me in Kent instead of Torrington, maybe he would have had a thing for girls flapping head to toe with leather fringe, bangs teased up like a rooster’s comb and gold eye shadow on her lips, and things today might be different.
Suddenly I snapped back to reality and wondered how long I’d been going straight. At some point on the way home I was supposed to take a right turn onto Route 185, but I couldn’t remember for the life of me if I ever made the turn. I looked from side to side, but nothing looked familiar. Had I ever driven by that farm before? Those condos or that golf club? The daycare center with ducks parading across its sign?
No. I was sure I’d never seen any of these landmarks before in my life. Not that I could count on my certainty, since I could drive by a live circus every day on my way to work for ten years and still never notice it. I spied a driveway to turn around in, put on my blinker and slowed down….then again, nah. It was too narrow, and it would be almost impossible to back out. Besides, that parking lot over there looked a lot more U-turn friendly. Once again, I came to a complete stop….bah, forget it. There was too much oncoming traffic, and I didn’t want to hold up the line of cars behind me. Up ahead was a yellow light. By some impulse, I sped up. Then again, I decided, I could use a red light to give me some time to figure out where I was going. For the third time, I slammed on my brakes. The guy behind me came to a screeching halt just inches away from my bumper.
I stuck my head out the window and smiled my most damsel-in-distress-like smile. “Excuse me,” I chirped, “but can you tell me how to get to Route 185?”
He didn’t smile back. “You’re on it,” he grumbled. I’m pretty sure his teeth were gnashed.
“OH! WHOOPS! Thank you,” I giggled, then rolled up my window and journeyed on, confidently, not feeling the least bit incompetent or ridiculous. Why? Because I’m still driving my mother-in-law’s car with Florida oranges on the plates.
Out-of-state license plates: my own personal written excuse for driving idiocy.