BEHIND THE WHEEL: JOYRIDES AND FOGGY NIGHTTIME NOTIONS (PART II OF IV)
In honor of the fact that my driver’s license is finally expiring after what seems like ages and since they didn’t just mail me a new one again like last time, I actually have to brave the DMV and a camera for a new photo (two of my least favorite activities) . Over the remainder of this week I’ll be sharing some of my adventures and lessons learned while behind the wheel. For Part I, which focuses on first car accidents and lessons learned, click here.
So today, I’ll focus on the anticipation, fun, and danger of what really makes first getting to drive so exciting and appealing. Let me just preface this column entry with the following, I was a good kid growing up and a good teenager (or as good as teenagers can be) as were my friends at the time (many of which I’m still friends with), so my parents didn’t have much to worry about when it came to me or my friends. Sure, we went to parties and stayed out past curfew, etc. but then I appeased all of that by getting good grades and not being too “angst-y” during these teenage years. Nothing too out of the ordinary, except for what they didn’t really know –which at the time we didn’t really think of it as being too dangerous, but in reality it could have been.
The day I could get my driver’s license couldn’t come fast enough for me. Out of the blue one day when I was twelve or thirteen my father decided to teach me how to drive. I give him major props for not showing any fear of losing his life while being in the same vehicle that a pre-teen me was behind the wheel of. In fact, if anyone has a teenager or even an adult that needs to learn how to drive, I’d send them over to my father who has nerves of steel and even more patience than I do (which for those of you that know me, is a lot). The best thing I remember him doing was pretending to sleep while I drove. At first, it’d freak me out a little and then it might’ve empowered me a little thinking “Wow. I must be doing a really good job, if dad trusts me to not kill us.” I remember him telling me the first time he did it something along the lines of, “Siria, I’m going to take a nap. If you want to kill us that is up to you, but I think we’ve each still got a lot left to do before either of us go.” All I could answer was “Ok.”
Yeah, ok no pressure right?
My mother was another story. She obviously was more fearful of her life. Heck, she had us and my younger brother to keep in order, so who could really blame her? She would refuse to ride any vehicle that I might be driving up until the time she deemed it completely necessary. Which came about the time that I was fifteen and a half and only after I’d: fulfilled the mandatory four Saturdays of Driver’s Ed (our school didn’t offer a Driver’s Education course option, so we had to take these at local driving schools—that doesn’t mean we were spared “Red Asphalt” though), had obtained my learner’s permit, and also put in the obligatory number of hours of behind-the-wheel with the driver instructor. Even then, it took her a while to stop telling me to “slow down” or to “check my mirrors” every five minutes or so. My favorite recollection was probably of her pumping the non-existent brake with her right foot while sitting in the passenger seat as I would near stop signs and stop lights. Somehow though, we all got through it and eventually I had my driver’s license.
However, there were those six months between having my permit and having a real driver’s license, where I’d decided that a permit was pretty much just like a driver’s license right? Especially if one of my other friends who also happened to have a permit was with me as well right? If one permit basically equaled a driver’s license, then with two permits we were totally in the clear, right? Right. We didn’t really believe that, but we decided that driving around together couldn’t really hurt.
Queue one of my best friends at the time, *Jennifer.
It all started with a party we wanted to go to, that didn’t even end up being a real party in the end. It was just some of our friends hanging out. It was a late night thing though and of course none of our parents would give us a ride there, nor allow us to stay out so late.
So we proceeded to come up with a plan, initially the only things that weren’t a variable in the plan were that we’d have to sneak out no matter what the plan was and that Jennifer would spend the night at my house. We contemplated our options, among which was calling other friends who already had their driver’s licenses and have one of them pick us up. However, we decided that we didn’t want to be stuck with anyone else and not be able to get back to my house before my parents woke up, at least not this first time. So we did the next best thing. We decided that the only thing we could do was sneak out in my truck (I had a car before I had my driver’s license—so, random I know).
Only, we didn’t know the first thing about sneaking a car out of a driveway, much less how to be completely silent. So we called up one of our guy friends that I’d known since elementary school, who happened to be with a bunch of our other guy friends. Their advice to us was to put it in neutral and then push it down the driveway. Two problems presented themselves fairly quickly. 1.) The truck was a big extended cab four wheel drive that we, being two teenage girls, definitely couldn’t push anywhere 2.) The driveway was flat, not at an incline – so it wasn’t that easy to get it to roll back and we were afraid it’d roll away from us and somehow crash into something like our fence. We decided not to push our luck. The guys volunteered to come get us, however by that point we’d just given up on going anywhere that night.
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Given up that is, until I had the idea of covering up the sound by running the washer and dryer to hide the sound of the engine turning. This worked like a charm and soon we were off excitedly to the lame party. It really was as I mentioned not really a party, more like friends hanging out–which is what most parties are anyhow, right? So we hung out for a little bit and then saw the time, by that point we definitely should’ve been pumpkins at least a few times over. So back to my house we headed, when BOOM! Karma hit us in the form of a dense blanket of fog (for those of you that aren’t aware, due to all of the agriculture in Bakersfield it has a well-deserved reputation for having awful fog. It gets so bad that schools frequently have 2hr/3hr. fog delays (sometimes, albeit rare, resulting in school closures for the day) during the winter months. Anyhow, so we already knew we shouldn’t be driving to begin with, especially not at those hours of night, add to that the fear of getting caught and we pretty much wanted to pull over on the side of the road and start bawling and call my parents to come get us. Only, I thought about the consequences and we decided trying to make our way to my house while driving blindly in the fog was a better choice. Eventually we made it home; a fifteen minute drive took us probably over an hour.
Now, I’d like to say that we learned our lesson after that night, but I’d be lying. (more…)
WHEN GERMS LEAD TO CHEMISTRY…
You never know what you’re going to catch on TV on a Saturday morning at 4:45 a.m. Sometimes, luck and insomnia are on your side (especially if you slept most of the previous day away while fighting a sore throat and fever) and you happen to catch a 15 minute Talk Back produced educational segment on Germs sandwiched in between an episode of “The Office” (the original British version) and “The Mighty Boosh.”
Now mind you, this wasn’t your typical 20/20 or Dateline type of expose. No, it was a “quick, don’t let them know what hit them” interactive (“write this down”) episode in the series “Look Around You” spoofing those “made for schools educational science videos” that were forced upon us in elementary school (even then they were outdated).
In reality this write-up should be dedicated to the brilliance of Peter Serafinowicz, creator of these spoofs. However, instead all of those petri dishes brought back memories of my high school Chemistry class, so that shall be the focus of this column entry.
Before getting to the Chemistry, let me tell you what I learned:
-Germs originated in Germany and then spread elsewhere (Not to be confused with The Germs who “originated” in Los Angeles and then spread “elsewhere” )
- If someone consumes a few drops of liquid sewage and coughs in your direction it may take as little as 3 hours for your temperature to go from 98.4 degrees to 107.2 degrees. (I had a fever. Does hot chocolate from the McCafe count as liquid sewage? Because that’s all I felt like consuming.)
- I could easily get sick by kissing a dog or a tramp or by using a friend’s recorder (It’s safe to say I didn’t get sick by doing any of these).
Now on to the Chemistry…
When we last left off with this particular Chemistry class it had gotten me into trouble with an ex-boyfriend. Science and I have never really gotten along. I appreciate it and actually know some scientists (yes, even of the rocket variety), chemists, and NASA engineers, but the scientific route has never been for me. Really, it’s all my fault. Science has repeatedly unsuccessfully tried to sweep me off my feet. I’ll blame it on timing as every time it’s tried to woo me, I’ve usually been in a relationship with History or English. (more…)
Eric’s Favorite Pieces: Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije Suite
If movies and literature are any indication, high school is one of the easiest times in a person’s life. Friends are made, everyone looks great all the time, parties involving making out occur with staggering regularity, and occasional vampire attacks keep everyone cheerfully on their toes. This was, it may surprise you to know, not the case at all for me. I was confused! I looked terrible all the time! Girls were far more frightening than vampires (the vampires at my high school were usually stoned, and didn’t pose much of a threat)! I had crippled myself socially by electing to play viola in the school orchestra (who would’ve thought membership in the high school orchestra didn’t come with a lifetime membership in the Playboy Mansion Free Handjob Club and the adoration of all who dared look upon me?)! Life was baffling and tumultuous!
Meanwhile, almost a century earlier, Sergei Prokofiev had written his first opera when he was frigging nine years old. Good thing one of us had things figured out, because as it turned out, Prokofiev helped me through all the tumultuity and bebafflement—possibly without even knowing he was doing it! In fact, I used to listen to the entirety of Abbey Road every morning (while eating crumpets, wondering what it was like to be all cultured and British) and fell asleep listening to Prokofiev’s suite from Lieutenant Kije. (more…)
We’ll Always Have Chemistry
“We’ll always have Chemistry“…a simple and harmless statement.
This was the closing line to a message that a guy friend named “Seth” (name has been changed) in high school had penned to me in one of my high school yearbooks. I think I had at least one class with this guy each year. Chemistry was one of them.
See? Nothing to that statement.
It’s always interesting to see how differently not only guys and girls but different types of people altogether process information and what comes out as a result.
A few weekends ago I went to a wedding with an ex-boyfriend, and so I don’t have to call him “the ex” let’s use his middle name, Andrew. I will rarely if ever, disclose much about my personal life and relationships as I like my privacy and it’s not everyone’s business. Writing about places I go, things I’m involved in, or past and current adventures with friends is fine but the rest is pretty much off limits.
However, since this relationship is in the past, the relationship ended amicably, and he is ok with this I’ll share since I think people can relate
After deciding that we’d go together to this wedding, (most of the people who were to be at this wedding were previously mutual friends) I reluctantly agreed to drive there together as well. We spent most of the drive to the wedding location filling each other in on what we’re currently up to, about who we still talk to, and laughing at the people who thought we were back together just because we were going to this wedding together. Although, I don’t keep my ex-boyfriends around in my daily life we are all still on good terms. So if I run into any of them ever (which never happens) it’s fine, I don’t date jerks. As with any old friend, the conversation turned reminiscent.
When we were together, Andrew had a friend who was in a relationship with a super jealous girl where they seemed to be arguing or about to start arguing anytime we saw them. We had to be around this a lot as my then boyfriend and his friend were involved in a project together and this situation was a constant issue for everyone involved. Everyone was sick of it. This girl seemed to be convinced that every girl was after her boyfriend, which was really NOT the case. I’m sure you know the type.
Anyhow, I had inquired about his friend and if he still talked to him and talking about them made us go back to us and the subject of fighting/arguing. We actually rarely argued, so it took us a minute or two to actually remember our own biggest fight. We both started laughing once we remembered it at almost the same time. It was that simple statement, “We’ll always have Chemistry,” that caused the argument by being so hugely misconstrued.
There are numerous other messages in the yearbook, that a boyfriend might’ve or should’ve been more concerned with, yet he was fixated on that one. He asked who Seth was, and I responded by saying something like “Oh he was this guy I had a bunch of classes with…totally super smart sweet guy,” and continued on to say, “Junior year we had a math class together, and he made this comic book of me and three other girls [I think I still have this at my parent's home somewhere with all of the yearbooks and old photos] that were in the same math groups all of the time. It was so funny [and it was funny!].” (more…)