everyone knows that flying is dangerous. turbulence, terrorism, and five dollar mixed drinks. then there are the inept passengers in the emergency exit row that don't look able-bodied enough to put their seats in the downright position, let alone pick up a 150 lbs door. the plane industry is flat lining and they no longer check the airtight seams or the specifications with quite so much life or death vigor. then there are the pilots. did you know most of them are drunk? sleep-deprived, addicted to cocaine, and pissed off at their pay reductions because the airline industry is flat lining, all of this while they're secluded in the front somewhere. you can't see them. they could be knocking back shots in there. they probably don't even have to pay the five dollars.
but what i know about flying, is that statistically, it is far safer than driving. it's counterintuitive, really, that being on the ground going seventy miles an hour is more dangerous than going six hundred miles an hour thousands of feet in the air. but defiant of all logical probability, i have taken it upon me to squeeze in three weeks of clothes, a case of diet cokes, my brother's DVD collection, and my mom's gilded mirror frame into a 1992 sedan that could probably use some specification checks. and in a few states i will have the pleasure of picking up my ten years younger little sister from the Albuquerque international airport. i'm a teacher. it's late July. time for another round of family vacationing in phoenix, Arizona.
i've always been a good endurance driver. when i was fourteen my dad and i had to drive by ourselves back home from Florida. ben's three and a half years older than me, and at eighteen he had decided he didn't want to go on family vacations anymore. so he stayed home. got a fever and panicked. when he called our hotel room phone, mom said he was almost crying. then she started to cry. little allie didn't know what was going on, but she refused to leave Disney world, started crying herself at the thought. so dad and i left, jumped into our tan Oldsmobile and drove straight back to Ohio. mom remembered to yell, "don't let her drive! she doesn't even have a permit". but that didn't matter. when dad said he couldn't focus on the road anymore at three in the morning, i drove through Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. i watched the odometer when i wasn't watching the road. 600 miles before i even got my permit.
ben ended up in the hospital, but he survived. i think that affected him subconsciously, because he never misses a family vacation now. he still lives in Cincinnati around mom and dad. whenever i call mom, she's always going on and on about what ben's been doing with his life: he started dating this nice woman who has a two year old son; he painted the outside of his house the most atrocious shade of off-white; he got into an argument with your father about religion again. i always feel left out of family discussions. i try not to call too often.
the road is mostly vacant. it's a fairly boring drive once you hit I-40 West and i've driven this way so many times that i don't even need to print MapQuest directions anymore. i get to drive through Oklahoma, and it always puts me in a bad mood to see the sun staring on Oklahoma city projects through a cloudless sky. the buildings are all the same shade of beige as the surrounding, almost-desert earth.
i've set the radio to scan so it can fluctuate between the uneducated drawl of country music DJs, talk show hosts in various degrees of contention, the hyper excitement of KISS FM, and the monotone staleness of NPR. Oklahoma city isn't too bad, i guess, it's prettier than Wichita even though they're about the same size. but i'm glad when i get out and pass into Texas. "Welcome to Texas. Drive Friendly -- The Texas Way". I roll my eyes. allie and i used to go on road trips all the time from Cincinnati to las Vegas when she was taking a gap year that turned into not going to college and i was free because i was never motivated enough or too scared to teach summer school.
we stopped by a real kitschy diner gas station combo, proclaimed with neon signs, glowing green with krypton. (i know that krypton gas produces green light when excited with electrical currents because i'm a damn good chemistry teacher). she kept complaining about how natty her dark blonde hair was and i kept telling her she looked like she had just gotten out of salt water, and wasn't that the look that everyone was going for? allie's gorgeous. i don't know why. mom was 38 when she produced a little blond kid with funny green eyes that never fully focused on anybody or anything for very long. and the genetic material of a 38 year old woman isn't nearly as good as that of a 28 year old (i know this because i'm also a biology teacher every other year). yet i'm the uglier sister.
but that never kept allie from complaining about something. usually it was her looks. if you ever asked her seriously, sat her down and asked her why she didn't go to college, if you asked her long enough, she'd start crying and become incoherent. "i don't want to" didn't seem like a good enough answer, but that's all she'd ever say more or less on the topic. no, she tried not to complain about not going to college, cause she knew it was her own damn fault.
i've noticed that whenever i push the car above 90 mph i can hear high pitched rattling. but when i take it to 100 all that racket just stops and all you can hear is the wind. but we've gotten too many tickets on I-40 to count. i top out at 112, then i set the cruise control to ten above the speed limit. shrubs and hills and wire fences blend into the stereotypical southwest setting.
anyway, the diner was okay. it looked friendly on the outside and on the inside. The Half Moon Cafe it was called, because it was open 24 hours a day. i noticed that little detail above the faded sign saying it accepted VISA. a television was set to a baseball game and allie and i sat down waiting for one of us to feel like driving again. the waitress was short with greasy black hair and blond eyebrows. her nose was like a pin cushion of studs and rings. but she seemed friendly enough. i wanted pancakes, didn't care that it was 4 in the afternoon. allie got coffee. i rolled my eyes. i said something like that's all you ever eat? and she got defensive. started talking about how she had gained five pounds this month and i said it doesn't matter if i couldn't notice it. we were always pissed off at each other, even if it didn't impact our friendship in any noticeable way.
thirty minutes later we're back in the car and i'm yelling at her until i start to cry because how could she damn near say that to my face in front of strangers?! and no i didn't care if they seemed like nice people and i definitely didn't care that that one guy was kind of cute. why are you such a goddamn slut?! i yelled and slammed my hands into the steering wheel. the speedometer jumped up because i couldn't control the pressure of my feet anymore. and i couldn't see either, but i knew that there was no one on the road because we were in the middle of nowhere.
allie didn't say anything. she didn't know what to say. she kept combing through her hair with her feet pressed up against the dashboard looking out at the car side mirror. i felt like i should tell her not to keep her feet pressed up like that--that if we got into a crash she'd lose her legs. maybe. i didn't actually know. but i didn't tell her because i was infuriated. all my life. all my life. when i felt as though i could tell her anything, i told her something: i want to set down guidelines: don't hit on strangers; don't let strangers hit on you; don't involve yourself with strangers; and don't ever insult me in front of people neither of us knows. we could have gotten mugged, beaten, and/or raped. and i know this because i'm ten years older than you so shut up.
if someone tells you friendly is the texas way, they're full of bullshit.
No comments:
Post a Comment