the drive in to school isn't too bad. it's about fifteen minutes of driving, but it's not fun roads. just the roads that go in one big line, are prone to congestion, and have matching strip malls on either side. i've never liked those kinds of roads. i like the ones that wind, with deep and dense forests on either side. when you're driving, you never think about how absolutely massive those forests are, because you can only see the front. not most people, anyway. i think that's one of my gifts: i think about those things that most just glance over. anyway, those roads where you go really fast at nighttime when you know no one is around the corner, because you would've seen their lights in the trees, shadows of the pine needles cast on the trunks and the ground. what's weird is that shadows still seem dark at nighttime, when the light's obstructed it just seems darker than everything else around it, the absence of light only clearer with the lights around it. with the windows rolled down, going way faster than you should, nothing on the radio, those roads are the closest we get to heaven and i am absolutely sure of it. shit, i was talking about something. the drive in to school.
it really isn't too bad. as long as you get out the door before like 7:30, the traffic isn't bad. shit, i hate the way that looks. i absolutely hate it. why aren't there lower case numbers? numbers are so fucking abrasive, the way they fuck up the whole aesthetic i had going with all the lower case. seven thirty? is that better? that's fucking incomprehensible. i am so goddamned dissatisfied with the english language. we really need a new one. remember when we were kids and we'd always try to come up with new languages? that seems like it'd be one of those universal things everybody experiences one way or another. there i go again, ranting about my dissatisfaction with the english language. i really am dissatisfied with a lot of things, but i swear to god (lower-case g. that's disrespectful, isn't it? shit. now i have to be dissatisfied with organized religion, too. i guess i'll touch on that more later) i had a point, initially, about the drive to school.
i've been making it since fourth grade. not myself driving, obviously, because i was like eight back then and my mom drove me. that was back when my mom made me sack lunches and stuff like that, little gestures that i took for granted then that i'm starved for now. have you ever noticed that repetition is like, super comforting? little routines make places feel like home. bed times, dinner at six thirty (6:30? fucking piece of shit english lexicon), all of that adds up. as we get older, those things go away under the guise of freedom. we all think we want freedom, but right now i really want a fucking pb&j and a danimals smoothie in a little brown bag, a little "s" written on the front. i want to be shipped off to bed at 8:30 (SHIT) instead of sitting up in front of the blue glow of the computer trying (but not really trying) to finish my us history homework before my alarm goes off. expectations and apathy is a real shitstorm combination. i got off topic again. sorry.
the best part of the drive is that i know exactly what to expect. i had it figured out by around the tenth day of fourth grade, which was also around the time that i learned it wasn't cool to cry in class because you missed your mom. even when i was asleep in the backseat, i knew when to wake up. left turn, three minutes, left turn, three minutes, right turn, one minute, left turn, four minutes, right turn, wake up. with the exception of a couple of car wrecks, these past seven years have been pretty consistent when it came to going into school. that luxury, sweet monotony, was stripped from me. remember what i said earlier? about how repetition is comforting? i hadn't realized how much i was relying on that boring drive to school until it wasn't so boring.
i had slept through my alarm. it was 9:04 (MOTHERFUCK) when i finally got up. i had never been late to school. sitting up on the edge of my bed, i felt a brief, enticing feeling of liberation, before waves of stress toppled that shit down. that always happens, where i feel something good before my brain decides that "that shit's cancelled" and i feel like hot shit again. my alarm was still going off. it was one of those old metal ones with the little steel hammer that bangs the bells until you can turn it off. my mom used to knock gently on my door at six forty-five (goddamn it goddamn it goddamn it) and stand there until i got all the way out of bed. a good balanced breakfast and a pat on the back and i was out the door. now all i get is the steel shit clock from hell and the dregs from a pot of warm coffee. left turn, three minutes. left turn, three minutes. right turn, twenty-five seconds. i was still half asleep when my eyelids snapped open, my leg going rigid, slamming the brake against the ground. no police, no other cars, just me and what i saw laying before me on the road. my brake literally always makes this loud-ass clanking noise when i brake hard, because my truck is very old. the floor, the brake, pretty much everything is metal. not sleek, stainless steel type metal, like shed-roof type sheet metal. the backseat's floor had rusted, it looked kinda like the flintstones car that you can stick your feet through to pedal. it was a pain in the ass during the winter months, with that frigid-ass air blowing under my legs and shit. so when i stomped on the brakes, all i heard was that loud ass clank. god, how that got on my nerves.
anyway, the clanking really distracted me from the body strewn haphazardly across the road.
