Wednesday November 14, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Ingrained, for whatever reason
Little, seemingly unimportant moments that I unintentionally and intensely relive from time to time:
January 2003: Many new friends have received their licenses and we drive by the carful. As the music volume increases, I become exceedingly nervous.
April 2004: I’m driving away from my high school, alone, with my windows down. The sun’s finally out. The parking lots surrounding the campus are empty.
November 2005: I sit with a friend after a tremendously hard day. Everything is very quiet. His small, square windows are open. It’s cold. He brings out his guitar and plays it for me.
July 2006: My favorite male co-counselor, from England, is intently watching his young campers as they eat lunch. Overcome by their handling of flatware, the knives in the wrong hands, the forks upside down, he jumps up and screams, “BLOODY HELL,” knocking his cereal aside, and instantly receives a dozen silent stares from his table of preteen boys.
August 2007: I pick my sister up from her first junior high school dance. As I watch her approach my car, I try to picture tiny versions of my friends and myself leaving the same gym. I can’t. I consider how two of them, now, are soldiers.
Today I was driving on the highway, and ahead of me, on the right, I saw an oddly shaped truck.
It ended up being a big ol’ house. Strapped to a truck.
The end.
Little, seemingly unimportant moments that I unintentionally and intensely relive from time to time:
January 2003: Many new friends have received their licenses and we drive by the carful. As the music volume increases, I become exceedingly nervous.
April 2004: I’m driving away from my high school, alone, with my windows down. The sun’s finally out. The parking lots surrounding the campus are empty.
November 2005: I sit with a friend after a tremendously hard day. Everything is very quiet. His small, square windows are open. It’s cold. He brings out his guitar and plays it for me.
July 2006: My favorite male co-counselor, from England, is intently watching his young campers as they eat lunch. Overcome by their handling of flatware, the knives in the wrong hands, the forks upside down, he jumps up and screams, “BLOODY HELL,” knocking his cereal aside, and instantly receives a dozen silent stares from his table of preteen boys.
August 2007: I pick my sister up from her first junior high school dance. As I watch her approach my car, I try to picture tiny versions of my friends and myself leaving the same gym. I can’t. I consider how two of them, now, are soldiers.
Today I was driving on the highway, and ahead of me, on the right, I saw an oddly shaped truck.
It ended up being a big ol’ house. Strapped to a truck.
The end.
oh i think i loved that post! my favorite is of you in the car with your friends. i was ALWAYS nervous in the car. the more louder ppl got, i was convinced the driver would crash.
Man, the first day I got my license I almost got into at least 2 accidents. Music and friends were definitely a big part.
And to make up for it, now I drive like a grandma…
Glad I’m not the only one. My newest road fear? Houses falling on me.
Let me be the third to identify entirely with the car memory. I remember being in a tiny VW bug, six of us, with the shortest friend folded up on the backseat floor over our feet. And Coldplay (could have been more cop-bait-y) at top volume and we seemed to be going awfully fast. Yeesh.
HA. (@ your comment)
Those are some really great images.
I think I drove past you today then, going the other direction. Was it lunchtime?
Woy – YES.
WEIRD.
There was an ASSLOAD of those houses going southbound on the parkway north. I counted 15 or so. The caravan stretched for almost a mile.
Really? Wow. I only saw one. Maybe a straggler?
House cars! New from Honda. For the house owners with seperation anxiety.
be careful.
Oh I am very familiar with houses on trucks on my commutes. It seems we Southerners were once a nomadic people. This is not the case anymore, mind you, but we’re comforted at the thought that our houses can be picked up and moved at any time if need be.
It’s sometimes amazing what little bits stick with us so vividly.
(I too am afraid a house or other large object strapped to a truck will fall on me).
I see all sorts of craziness on the highway where I live. We got the houses a lot, really big machinery for oil and coal minings, and there was even a time where I saw all these trailers carrying the Nascar cars. There was ten of them all in a row driving West to California.
My sister is at that same junior high age. I often try and think back to try and remember how it was when I was her age [admittedly, it's sometimes because I'm trying to keep my temper] and it’s so weird. It makes me feel so old.
I think it’s clear by now I don’t proofread anything I write.
I love it when I see houses drive by on the freeway at break-neck speeds! I start imagining the people who are in those houses at that very moment, frightened for their very lives, and how I’ll follow after them and save their lives!
It’s a very heroic way to start your morning, or end your day.
Oh yes, the days of picking up the little sister from things. She preferred me to pick her up as the older sister is so much cooler than the parent. Only not so much, mom was much more understanding than I was when the brat screwed up. (I have called her the brat since she was maybe 2, now if I call her by her name she thinks I’m angry, so calling her the brat just then wasn’t an insult, although when she was younger it TOTALLY was)