Traffic

It's funny the thoughts that find their way into your head while sitting in traffic. I was in Half Moon Bay this morning for the annual Pumpkin Festival. Traffic on the way home is always awful...a two-lane street winds through the hills to dump hundreds of cars onto the freeways. Estimated time to travel 10 miles: 62 minutes.

I found myself thinking...spinning thoughts...my mind sparked by landmarks from my teenage days. I spent many days in and around the beaches of the area. I was facing the Rite Aid, used to be a Thrifty Drug, where my friend and I bought ice cream and the cute spider tattooed boy behind the counter said I looked like a girl he knew and weeks later he remembered me outside of the punk club in Berkeley.

I was drunk. He was straight edge. He gave me a quote for the article my mom was writing on the club scene. I was researching that night. Usually I was drunk with no purpose.

I thought of Captain Morgan and the senior trip three of us skipped to play at San Gregorio State Beach. Our own "senior moment" before we were old. We jumped off of low cliffs (or high rocks) onto the wet sand and huddled in a cave that was only exposed during very low tide cycles to smoke the green goddess.

Somehow my mind came around to the car behind whose wheel I was now sitting. I drive John's car now. I didn't always. I was staring at the rear end of a relative of my beloved car...which John now drives. Babies confuse many things, cars and drivers among them.

When John and I first began dating we were a little wild. We were having fun, we still are, but not in the same ways. After we had been dating for--oh--about a month I took him to meet my family. And I mean MEET my family. When my parents were still together we would all go Christmas caroling sometime in December. It was tradition. I took John. He must have been really into me to have gone to meet my family (brother and sisters included) and SING with them after only knowing me for a month. I had to marry him, and now you know why.

We were driving back to San Jose kind of late at night. Eleven or midnight. We decided to race home. Race. Each other. Over the freeway we sped. I was pushing 100 mph at one point and we were moving across lanes just racing for the sheer love of speed and the fun and, yes, even the danger. It was glorious.

It all came down to the last stretch of the race. We were going to my house for the night. I zigged and he zagged and he made it around the corner and snagged the parking spot first. I gambled and lost. He told me he always had it in the bag, his engine is bigger than mine. I didn't care. I just like to race.

Now I drive that same car with the bigger engine, but I wouldn't, couldn't, race it. We once read a story about a couple that was into illegal street racing. Only, they carried their very small children in the back seat. I couldn't do that. Now I have the car that won and I won't race it.

And Half Moon Bay looks different and the drug store is changed and I'm sure the place where I bought the purple shorts because my jeans were soaked is gone...I drove there without my license because no one cared if I did at that moment...I have the license now. And the car. And I was sitting in traffic letting my mind spin fine webs of memory.