It’s that time of year. Halloween is upon us. That mischievous feeling (just how do you pronounce that word anyway?) is in our blood. We remember our childhood antics and everything seems to be in tune with what is about to happen. The wind is cool. The leaves are falling. And the branches brace for the change of time. And so do we. The other night I was driving, and the moon, a rather plump moon, more half than whole (I’m sure someone could tell me its phase), was playing a game of jump rope or hide ‘n’ seek or tag, lighting my way as I sped down the road, first bright on one side, then on the other, and I smiled big as it played its game with me, smiling its big smile back. I have these moments where I want to believe it’s my dad somehow, and it’s impossible not to when I think back to his tale: “Look. The moon is following you,” and for a moment, I remember a simple time, a time of childhood and carefree bliss. No bills. No worries. No fear of acceptance or success. Just simply one goal: To get that moon not to turn its back on me, to keep following me as we bumped along, not understanding how, no matter how far my dad drove, that moon still followed. I would prop my body around as best I could in the back seat the whole drive, craning my neck uncomfortably, to see if the moon was, in fact, still with me, ducking his face occasionally behind a building or a tree, causing my heart to race until Dad would yell: "There it is again." I was amazed by it. Enamored. Mystified. Felt special. And I believed...in magic. Nothing else mattered. Time gets us all to the same place, and the ride best be ridden with bright lights on our sides. A friend keeps telling me to pay attention to events and things that happen around me. That all of it collectively speaks to each one of us. I’m not sure I believe her. I’m a skeptic you know. But it’s hard not to notice when the weight of everything at once all add up, and we feel ourselves drowning; and then something like this happens, impossible to ignore. Perhaps it is simple coincidence. Does it matter? For in that moment, I remembered the feeling of unconditional love in the light of my dad’s memory, and all my troubles faded to jump rope with a moon.
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How do you feel about bumper stickers? Are they something you own personally? Do you cover your car in them? Have one or a few? If not, do you like reading them? Is there a limit? Are too many too many already? As I was driving this morning, I was running a little late, and of course, there was a car driving on the highway at a ridiculously slow speed, causing all kinds of insane driver responses of weaving and honking and waggling fingers and, I'm sure, huffing of choice obscenities through clenched teeth, trying, desperately, to go from Point A to Point B without getting into accidents. I was slightly furious: "The left lane is for passing! Move over!" I screamed in my head. At long last, the slow driver put on her blinker and slowly moved to the right lane, and we all got ready to finally pass, making it to our destination a whole minute sooner! As I got closer behind the car, I noticed a bumper sticker and around it, smaller, a few others, all related to the same topic, and when I went to pass and make eye contact, the driver was smiling, apparently oblivious, singing whatever was coming from her little Subaru, and for the briefest of moments, I smiled too, and shook my head at myself. Why was I in such a hurry? And I wondered why the driver was so calm and so happy amidst all the aggravated energy. It got me thinking about those bumper stickers on her car. I liked them. And that, too, made me smile. "How can I be mad at someone with the same political views and humor as me?" I thought and forgave her on the spot. But it made me think further: Was there any correlation between her attitude and her bumper stickers? Who puts bumper stickers on their car? Do people with bumper stickers plastered on their car actually worry less? Could it be that people who don't take themselves too seriously also put bumper stickers on their car? It's a strange theory and doubt it will hold up if I were to research it, but it did make me wonder: Is it the the carefree, the angry, the passionate, the crazy, or the every man who puts bumper stickers on his/her cars? I grew up in a family very anti-bumper stickers. It causes fights. It ruins a piece of property we should take pride in. It will hurt the resale. And more times than not, it's political, and with road rage at an all-time high, do we really want to be espousing our political and religious views driving in a congested city, full of angry, late, and impatient people? Would my smile have turned to something a bit more sinister had the bumper sticker said something that infuriated me or disparaged causes I care about? There is one, in particular, that really bothers me. Living in a primarily liberal state, I imagine it pisses off a few people. So do bumper stickers made sense? Is anyone going to change their minds about ANYTHING from a bumper sticker? The government makes lots of laws about driving. Mandatory seatbelts. Speed limits on highways. What we can and can not do while in our own cars (some of which make a helluva lot a sense). Should bumper stickers be put in that category? Are they too distracting, or worse, provokers of anger and road rage? It's their job, isn't it? To get a rise out of someone? A laugh. A clap. A honk of approval. Something to ponder. Think on. Read a few times. And of course, to incite action and in some cases, provoke anger. And to read them takes our attention away from the road, doesn't it? Or are bumper stickers simply an extension, as anything else is, of our personalities just as a t-shirt we wear or sign we put up in our yard or a button on the bag we carry?
I'm all for free expression, but should bumper stickers be relegated to places where safety and accidents and poor driving won't be compromised? I'm not sure of the answer...but I do know this. Today, I was grateful for one, because it taught me to remember that all the things I needed to get to would still be there when I arrived; and in fact, they are now over. Every moment is that way...so take your time. Are people moving too fast? Is no one having a real conversation anymore as a result? Is there any way to turn back? Or are you happy this way? Is this fast-paced world causing more and more disorders of anxiety and panic attacks and even agoraphobia? In one of my classes the other day, a student lamented that she was “docked” at work for not getting the customer’s order to him in a timely 60-second fashion and that if it continued to happen, down would the ax come, clean and swift. After all, the customer shouldn’t have to wait. It’s “fast” food for a reason. And heaven forbid, we can’t stuff our faces or slurp our drinks the moment we order them the way we can find out every ingredient that went into that drink within a 10-second swipe of our fingers across our phones. Weather today? One second. Top celebrity break up? Two seconds. Country with the lowest population? Maybe you’ll have to wait three whole seconds for your answer, but it certainly isn’t close to sixty. Slow Wi-Fi? Call in the National Guard! It’s a crisis! I thought about that today getting my coffee through the drive-thru and how recently I’ve been stressed out about finding my credit card or cash fast enough, wondering if the 18-year-old under the gun to get my order out in the fastest time possible, not bothering to make eye contact with me, would actually drop it onto my lap, thinking I’m holding it already when I’m not, and me making excuses to her (Oh, forgive me, I just need to find my credit card), because I can’t seem to get my act together fast enough! Worse, even, I begin to panic that the car behind me will start to honk its horn, forcing my credit card to sprout wings, fly into the air and onto the car’s floor, where I feel around to, desperately, find it in time all the while looking in my rear view mirror to make sure no one behind me is uttering obscenities at how slow I’m being! (And breathe.) It’s absurd. I, myself, will pull over to make sure I have everything ready to go, lest I be penalized for taking more than the allotted minute and hold up the line. Clearly, I’m not just discussing fast food. I’m discussing that we are now a society of fast food. We want it. We want it now. We don’t want to wait. We don’t want to take our time to enjoy things or learn. And we hardly want to think. We want our news in 280 characters of fewer, our poetry to fit on Instagram squares, and our god-damned purchases the next day damn it. Amazon is kicking everyone to the curb. I hear it everywhere. Well, Amazon can get it to me in two days. Why would I wait for the same thing elsewhere? Yup. Why wait when you don’t have to? The problem is…some things take the wait. Some things only happen with perseverance. And some things need tilling and nurturing to be the best they can be. Not everything can be "got" through a fast-food window. Some things are actually better when done a bit slowly. Love. The perfect apple. A sandcastle. A friendship. Music. Walks. A great play. And some things worthwhile only happen with hard work. We learn by going a bit more slowly. We make lots of mistakes when we rush things. And I’m seeing every facet of life hurt by our fast-food culture. Student writing. My writing. Conversations between people. Patience. Debate. So much thinking is regurgitation. Repeats of tweets. Black and white ideas vs. discussing the grey areas, seeing other point of views, that old thing of the past called listening. I’m not sure what we do about it. And it scares me. It actually scares me. And I wonder if we just need to blow ourselves up like the dystopian tales of the past to start over. But would anything change or are we cursed to suffer the same fate into infinity? I don’t have answers and perhaps that’s what scares me so much. So. I sit, cross my legs, take a sip of my maple pecan coffee, slowly, making that ‘ahhhh’ sound after I swallow, and I write an expanded moment, like the ones I try to teach my students…and I take my time... |
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I LOVE to write and read. I particularly enjoy reading erotic romance that has tons of emotion in it. I hope you will ask me questions and share your favorite authors and novels. I welcome all feedback.
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