Life Behind the Second Wheel
It took me a long time to realize that i was a driving instructor.
Activities that require your full attention are always the most fun — sex, downhill skiing, rubbing your stomach and your head at the same time, etc.
Sitting behind the wheel drops you into this sacred space — you can, must, do nothing other than drive.
But I was not a natural driver, almost dyslexic behind the wheel. i missed street signs, was always lost, and changed lanes like a grandmother (permanently signaling for the ‘eventual left,’ hoping to be let in).
Just getting from point A to point B took much energy and focus, so I had to either learn to love the journey, or learn the patience to tolerate long bus rides across town.
I came to love it through a series of traumatic journeys, glorious in the way they required my full attention:
#1: 1974 (13 years old)
Doing patrols around my uncle’s farm to check on the status of various valves and pumps, a true test of navigation — I developed a friendship with that 1968 ford pickup just like a boy in the 1840s must’ve had with his first reliable horse.
#2: 1979 (18 years old)
Coming down from the mountains of Colorado in a snowstorm, behind the wheel a 4-speed datsun hatchback with conventional tires. ingredients: white knuckles, cliffside ice-slides, and one change of underpants.
#3: 1982 (Senior at Wake Forest University)
Driving my entire fraternity in a rented 45-seat coach bus from Winston Salem down to Tallahassee, to see the Allman Brothers play in the Florida State bandshell.
Being behind the wheel in these situations made me feel fully human, alive, aware, challenged.
When I graduated college, most chemistry majors like me went to work at RJ Reynolds in Winston Salem, but Itook a job as a driver at Cintas, delivering industrial debris (uniforms, linens, etc) between a distribution center and destinations high in the Appalachain mountains.
Avery day and every road presented a new challenge. Black ice, hairpin turns, and rejections of deliveries.
Over time, the challenges of the Appalachains baked into my soul — I evolved into a professional driver, unflappable, confident and in control.
But this became its own problem. A good driver no longer has to pay attention to the road, a good driver internalizes all of the small ticks that are required of a professional. A good driver lets his mind wander.
This was my trap: boredom, stifling boredom at the sameness of competence. Isearched for a way out.
And found it again behind the wheel, by adding two instruments: a pen and paper.
I sat in the cab with the engine off at rest stops, using the steering wheel as a clipboard, writing observations of the road passing around me.
I idled in the driveway before heading out on my route, writing down what I could remember from an early-morning dream:
A beautiful volcanic island rises gently from the ocean, with glassy, tree protected tidepool coves, a clay-brick road that makes its way around it, jutting off into inland uphill climbing dirt roads, which ascend into a lush jungle forest bathed in fog from the sea below.
All of the people you love live on that island, going about their daily lives — surfing, driving to the jungle to pick one fresh papaya, purely for pleasure, roasting a number of feral cows to feed the entire island.
There is no currency, and the farms and pastures produce all of the food you’ll ever require. You and everyone you love are free to do whatever you like, all day, every day, month and year until you’re buried in and repurposed into rich volcanic soil.
In the immediacy of writing Ireclaimed the do-one-thing-at-a-timeness I initially found when struggling to drive. On the road every day, with the mechanics of driving accomplished by my body in the background, my mind awakened to the infinite nuance unfolding on every side of my Cintas van.
A geologist on a beach would say that every pebble tells a story.
On the road, every driver’s grip on the wheel, lane change, or idle nose-picking reveals the truth of her instincts.
The observation of driving became an infinite well of novelty to draw from. and what better way to observe driving than to be an active observer — a professional passenger. A driving instructor.
