So, what's the deal
with driving?
written by David Baker
They say you write what you know, which I agree with, sort of. I really prefer writing stuff I don’t know — I feel I do my best work in Sanskrit about the minutia of quantum mechanics — but I often find myself fulfilling this old maxim. Since I’m not having sex and I haven’t mastered the ability to move small objects with my mind I’m stuck writing about my commute. It makes sense. I spend roughly 45 minutes a day in my car playing air guitar and scribbling down jokes. So that explains why several entries in my notebook read like this:
“It’s probably OK to wear floaties to your carpool, but bringing the inflatable gator seems a little excessive.”
And this:
“I like driving next to student drivers. First, I feel superior, like, ‘Oh, you’re just a student, huh? Well, I’m a professional. I can give freshman girls rides home in my van any time I want.’ And I also feel safe. Sure, they can’t parallel park, but who cares. They’re the only ones on the road who pay attention to what the hell they’re doing. The truth is, most people are more focused when they drive a golf ball than when they drive a car. I happen to be better at both activities when I’m drunk.”
The thing is, I really do jot jokes down when I’m driving. Monday through Friday, I can be seen steering with my legs while I’m writing about the internal struggle that must be bubbling inside a person who drives a Subaru Outback with a “Drill here. Drill now. Pay less.” bumper sticker that I can only hope is a shoe advertisement, or how the Utah vanity license plate, “Dr. Bob,” belongs to a shitty, late ‘90s, blue, Saturn sedan. The commute is a soul sucking void of happiness, but it hasn’t destroyed my air guitaring, and I’m not going to let it drain my creative juices, either. So I write while I drive out of principle.
And, to be honest, I have a very bad memory, as well. When you throw in red-faced frustration and a string of angry curse words that are artfully pasted together like a kindergarten macaroni picture of a four-billed duck, I have no chance of remembering a joke I came up with at milepost 25.
But, writing while driving is not safe. I’ll admit that. At least I’m not one of these teens that are sexting and snapping pictures of their genitals while cruising the nation’s paved surfaces. I don’t know why I got a little self-righteous there. Luckily, I can take solace in the fact that I’m not alone in making my commute more dangerous. As a society, we’ve decided that we’re so bored with the idea of hurling our two-ton death machines, with ourselves crammed inside, down the road at 85 mph that we have to ramp up the excitement factor.
Some people fold their laundry. Others watch porn on their phones. I write jokes about the mobile lube service I was born to start. To each his own, I suppose.
At least, as a courtesy to my fellow motorists, I try not to write while driving at high speeds. And by courtesy, I mean that I don’t do it because I can’t read my handwriting, which resembles a third grader on amphetamines to begin with. Usually, I mumble the jokes over and over again until I’m at a stoplight or stuck in deadlocked traffic. It’s a lot safer — and a lot more legible — that way. The worst that can happen when writing at a dead stop is occasionally getting too caught up in my scribbling to lurch forward, holding up those behind me for three seconds — usually someone in an Audi who is in a hurry to get home and stare blankly at their spouse and/or offspring. But, for me, the biggest risk I take is that other motorists are more likely to take notice of my scribbling, and that isn’t always as insignificant as you may think.
Not long ago, I was writing in my notebook while at a stoplight, looked up to see if the light had changed, and there was a girl in the next car over giving me the evil eye. I wasn’t holding her up, so I couldn’t figure out the reason behind the glare. Then, I realized it had to have something do with my writing. She must have seen me scribbling away at the notebook I had propped up against the steering wheel and wondered what the hell I was doing. Maybe she thought I was drawing a picture of her naked (Wouldn’t have been a very erotic composition — I only draw stick figures, and their breasts always come out looking disproportionate) or creating a
“Please flash me, I’m still 13” sign. I’ll never know. But her look wasn’t quizzical. It said anger and disgust, like she just caught me masturbating in the middle of rush hour traffic.
Not everyone will understand the neurosis and eccentricities of joke scribblers — or those with short-term memory problems, for that matter. But I guess suffering a few scowls is the sacrifice you have to make in order to remember things like:
“I hate traffic jams.
They never spread particularly well.”
David Baker is a writer from Utah.
Visit his blog at www.themandiary.com.