driving miss crazy

It's interesting what a few punctuation marks can do to a simple sentence. Take, for instance, the title. "driving miss crazy". A little alteration, and we have "driving? miss crazy." Rearrange that and add a comma, and you have: "driving, miss? crazy." Or, say, put the question mark at the end, and you have "driving, miss crazy?" Flamingo sent me a story about an English professor who wrote up on his chalkboard the words 'a woman without her man is nothing' and told his class to add correct punctuation. The men rewrote it as: 'A woman, without her man, is nothing.' The women, on the other hand, rewrote it as, 'A woman: without her, man is nothing.'

...which goes to show absolutely nothing but that the human element can really screw with cold, hard data. Take my own situation, for instance. Having eliminated a daily commute of four hours from my weekdays, I am now stuck with a six hour commute on weekends, and a two to three hour commute twice a week into the City. The six hour commute is for San Rafael, where I still teach at Dominican University. The two to three hour commutes are due to classes still being taken at an unnamed redoubt of nondescript higher education, where I will eventually graduate with a Masters in Science, with a major in Software Engineering.

All told, I have eliminated a grand total of -- four times five is twenty, (plus the weekend, which was another four), so twenty-four, minus the new stuff, three times two which is six, plus six, which is twelve -- twelve hours from my weekly commute. My God. Did I really used to spend 24 hours a week in commuting? I must have been insane.

However, now that I've reduced my weekly commute to half of what it once was, I feel an urgent need to buy a car.

Naturally, I can think of a great many reasons why I shouldn't buy a car. For one thing, I'm a horrendously bad driver. My indifference to the other people on the road goes beyond the purely irresponsible to the outright suicidal. For another, I would have to take out a loan in order to pay for the car, which would mean an added drain on my always precarious finances. This goes without mentioning the collision, liability, and theft insurance I would have to get, plus the registration fees and the inconvenience of having to take the California State Driver's written exam in order to get an official California State Driver's License. The final clincher to this is the fact that I hate to drive. Cars are environmentally unsound. They promote laziness. Apathy. Sloth.

It is with all these things kept firmly in mind that I have narrowed my list of potential cars to the Honda Civic and the Toyota Prius. Both these cars are small, compact, and are less likely than an SUV to cause injury to anybody when driven by a reckless and incompetent driver. Both are environmentally sound -- the gasoline-electric hybrid Prius has the lowest emissions of all gas-powered cars on the road today, seconded only by the Nissan Sentra, bizarrely enough -- and both have good mileage, the hybrid being powered by regenerative braking and an average of 48 to 53 miles per gallon, while the Honda Civic is consistently one of the lead in good mileage for all gas powered vehicles.

I should have a car. I need a car. Everybody agrees. I live in Silicon Valley now, as opposed to San Francisco, where I lived in a tenement but saved money by having a world-class, inefficient but ubiquitous public transportation system. Here in SV, there is no public transportation system. Oh, there's CalTrain that chugs back and forth between Redwood City and San Francisco, but what is that in the grand scheme of things, really? There's SamTrans, but nobody's really sure where those things are going. In the grand scheme of things, it's the little inconveniences that start having to add up. Not being able to go buy clothes when I run out, for instance. Or shoes. Or underwear. Household supply runs that only happen when someone I know needs to go to Target for a few seconds. A Costco only a few miles away taunting me with its proximity and inaccessibility.

I am not made of such stuff that can resist the siren's call of Costco.

Still, every week, I manage to convince myself that I can do without. It's turned into an endurance test between me and the road, a throwback to the days when we were forced to jog cross-country in high school. "I'll just make it to that tree over there," I used to tell myself, "and then I'll walk." Every time I reached a milestone, I'd set another one, and force my legs to keep moving. That's what it's turning into for me and the as-yet nonexistent car. During the weekdays, it's not so bad. I can make the commute to my college, the two-hour one, without being overly stressed. It's the weekends, when I have to wake up at six in order to catch the train to get up to the City to catch MUNI to get to the bus stop to get the Golden Gate Transit bus to get to San Rafael to walk two miles to get to Dominican by ten that I start grinding my teeth and thinking longingly of power steering.

Once or twice I have actually brought myself to move past the initial inertia to walk into a car dealership. There, I have made a humbling discovery. I am not high on the list of statistical probabilities, sale-wise. In an car dealership empty of customers and teeming with salespeople, I rate about as high as navel lint. I ghosted around a Nissan dealership for about fifteen minutes, and the sound of my breathing was the loudest thing there. The salespeople were busy gathered around a television set. Several of them glanced up when I approached, only to lose interest pretty much immediately.

With a Jansport backpack, a sweatshirt, jeans, sneakers, and my hair up in piggytails, I suppose I didn't present the standard image of a big commission. I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, wandering into a fashion boutique with cash in hand, only to be turned away. When I make my first million, I'm going back there with a posse and humiliate the joint.

The other day, I had a brain wave and made my weekly visit to my sister's workplace, Lombardi Sports, with Purpose.

"I want to buy a scooter," I told her.

So I had mocked the people skidding around San Francisco on those ubiquitous aluminum skateboard-cheats. Maybe I had. And maybe I had also spent more than my share of time heaping scorn on the fact that the damn things cost more than a new television. Fine. However, there was something greatly attractive to the idea of flying down the sidewalk at four miles an hour, relying on the speed of wheels rather than mundane, ordinary walking.

"I'll be able to cut time in my travel," I explained to her. "I can catch the earlier San Rafael bus so I'll get to Dominican by nine instead of ten. And I can ride it to Dominican, so I bet I can get there even sooner. And I can catch the CalTrain after class, so I can go home instead of hanging out in the train station until one in the morning. And I can catch the later train out of Redwood City and ride to class and get there almost on time."

My sister, who always welcomed the chance to get me anything at discount at the store, ignored my rationalization and slung her arm around my shoulders. "Let's go get you a scooter."

It's a surprisingly expensive proposition to buy a scooter, though I consoled myself with the thought that it would be far more expensive to buy a car or, for that matter, a bicycle; once I reconciled myself to the fact that it would cost me at least $70, if not more, I threw caution to the winds. By the time I had finished dithering about and playing with the other sporting goods that were out on display, I had settled on a K-2 Scooter, a bright blue color, that was incidentally the cheapest model available.

The price tag claimed it was $75. My sister bore it off with her and eventually returned it to me, $15 cheaper. "It's an employee discount," she said happily, and watched me with the benevolence of a fairy godmother while I tucked it under my arm, aglow with the pride of ownership. "Do you want to buy anything else? How about a bicycle? Or maybe a scuba something?"

The scooter, now named Smurf, hangs out outside my cubicle on a couple days of the week. The Finnish guy who works on the same floor alleviates his own scooter envy by filching it whenever he feels the need. It's an entertaining sight, looking up and spying that blond head whizzing by. He's a dignified man, normally, tall and lean and grave and cynical, sort of the Nordic romantic hero-type. There's something marvelously ridiculous about watching him whip past my cubicle door, cheering himself on. He actually says "Whee." I never realized people actually used that word in real life.

breaking college boy

Link of the day: AOLiza. Has to be seen to be believed.

I told my sister that I wanted to do something fun on Monday, Martin Luther King Day. "Kayaking, skiing, rock climbing, whatever," I said. "I have to get out of the apartment and do something. Anything. Something fun. I have to get out, out, out, out, out...."

"We'll do something," she promised, hastily. "Sure. Whatever you want."

So on Monday, College Boy -- from work, you know -- and I drove up to the City to try some kayaking off of Treasure Island, which is where my sister's boyfriend lives. My sister's boyfriend is really cool. Of course, all my sister's boyfriends have been pretty cool, but this one's a keeper, (according to her, fickle as she can be), and I'm prone to agree with her. He's an avid sportsman with a great deal of charm, an all-around Good Guy. Plus, he has kayaks. Many boats, all lined up on top of each other behind his house in an old military house.

"This is his baby," my sister told me solemn, as we hoisted one of them up on top of his Jeep. "He polishes it with a soft cloth. If anything happens to it, I'm dead."

It was light. "What's it made out of?"

"Kevlar."

"Isn't that what they make bulletproof vests out of?"

...which all goes to show you that the universe does listen, and that it does have a sense of humor, however unfinished and unrefined.

College Boy was excited, which my sister accepted phlegmatically. Her reaction, as far as I could tell, was that anybody would be excited to go kayaking in the choppy San Francisco bay in the middle of January. I was as well, so I can hardly blame him. She went through all the steps of teaching us safety, while College Boy and I skidded happily around on the massive rocks that made up the 'shoreline'. "This is what I want to do," she confessed, halfway through the instruction. "I want to be a guide. Um." She eyed the choppy waves, and reached up a hand to clutch her hat to her head. The wind was kicking up a bit. "I think I won't teach you how to roll. It's a bit cold for that."

We learned about skirts, rubber things that resemble lampshades, that scoop out and seal the mouth of the kayak so that no water can make its way inside. We learned what to do if we capsized. "Get out of the kayak and hold on to it," my sister urged. The skirt came complete with a little ripcord, which one can pull in order to unseal one's self from the boat. She demonstrated how to paddle, a complicated maneuver at first for the uninitiated. Finally, she buckled a lifejacket around College Boy, and with my cheerful participation, dumped him into the Bay.

In under a minute, she was out on the water as well, while I danced gleefully on the shore to watch.

In under two minutes, College Boy had capsized and was bobbing, cursing and spitting.

My sister peered down at him, interested, and leaned over to fish him out of the swells. "Grab the boat," she lectured him, and gradually steered him and the kayak back out of the water. Poor College Boy looked like a drowned rat, and he was dancing with fury and excitement. His teeth were chattering. I sat down and laughed until I cried. "Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c...."

Despite his initial failure, he was determined to go back in. Like all extreme sportsmen, his setback had merely aroused his passion for the activity. His eyes gleamed, his jaw set, and he splashed back to the car to find another change of clothing, the kayak skirt still bouncing ridiculously around his thighs, while my sister and I stayed by the boats and murmured together.

"I didn't think he'd capsize," my sister said, ruefully. "I've never taught kayaking. I didn't anticipate."

"Well, we're brand new at it," I comforted, "and now you know. Besides which, it's the Bay. He wants to try again."

My sister brightened; like any true enthusiast, she's excited by the thought of making a conversion to one of her passions. "Good. I was worried he'd be scared off. I should give him a wetsuit, maybe."

By the time College Boy had returned, complete in wetsuit and skirt again, the waves were even more choppy. I watched them coming in with fascination; a hitherto unrealized sense of adventure was being tickled into life, and I was experiencing an urgent desire to get out on that water myself.

Once more we strapped College Boy into the boat, and once more the two of them skidded out onto the waves. It went better this time; very soon they were out of sight, around the curve of the shore.

I climbed on top of one of the big rocks to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

(and wait.)

After a long while during which I began to wonder if they'd decided to kayak around the entire island, a figure waddling across the parking lot caught the corner of my eye. I watched it approach. After a while, I decided that its strange version of duck locomotion was due to the fact that it had no shoes. A little bit later, I realized that the reason its hair wasn't flapping was because the hair was all wet.

In a few seconds, I had decided that it was my sister, who never capsizes unless she wants to, and had dashed over to meet her. "Are you okay? What happened? Where's College Boy? How's the boat? What happened? Where are your shoes? Did you fall in? Are you hurt? What happened to your shoes?"

My sister was shivering so violently, her teeth were literally rattling in her head. "College Boy capsized. I think he's had a shock. I lost my shoes."

"You're wet," I said, blankly.

"He's going to kill me," she wailed. "I fell in. I think the kayak is cracked. There's a hole in it, I think there's a hole in it. Oh my God...."

What a bullet couldn't do, the San Francisco Bay accomplished in half a second, flat.

I ran back to the dock to grab everything that we had left out, then stuffed both it and her into the car to wait while I crawled around on the rocks to go around the shore and find what was left of College Boy. He'd capsized, right after they'd gone around the corner; my sister had attempted to save him, since the waves were smashing him up against the shore, and had ended up falling in herself. The tide was coming in with a vengeance, and the waves were starting to hit the two-and-three foot range where they collided with the rocks. I was starting to imagine the next day at work, and my next department meeting.

"Of course, College Boy won't be joining us today," my boss would tell the rest of the group. "Yuhri killed him over the weekend."

This would not be doing good things to my reputation. Of course, the way my company runs, maybe it would actually be an improvement. I started imagining all the things I would be able to accomplish; the alarm that would motivate everybody to do the things I wanted them to do, the second they heard my voice on the phone.

"Better do what Yuhri wants. You'll end up dead, otherwise."

Every cloud has a silver lining, after all. As it turned out, College Boy wasn't dead at all; only much bruised and scraped and bleeding all over the algae-infested rocks. He was cursing to himself, and white as a sheet, but still had those bright, shiny eyes that come from adrenaline and excitement. "I fell in again," he announced, outraged. His feet were leaving a shiny red coating of blood over the rocks; he'd gotten his shoes wet from the first tipping-over, and he'd decided not to take them in for the second try out.

There was a rusty chain link fence verging the shore, part of a secured lot that had no visible means of egress. Between the three of us -- my sister having emerged from the car, still shaking, but urgent about rescuing the boyfriend's kayak, at least what was left of it -- we hiked the boats to safety. It was quite an accomplishment, getting the kayaks over the chain link fence; fortunately, the car was an SUV, and we simply padded the top of the fence and tipped the boats over it right onto the racks waiting on the car's roof.

"Your sister is really strong," College Boy whispered to me, later. "She just leaned over and grabbed me when I fell in. With one arm. She lifted me up."

Afterwards, when the expected storm broke and turned out to be a light drizzle -- ("The important thing is that you're okay," he said, showing inhuman understanding and sympathy) -- my sister came stumbling downstairs to treat glass cuts in the soles of her feet. College Boy watched with attentive interest before doing the same thing to his own lacerated feet. She and the Boyfriend looked on, helping him out and giving him first aid lessons as they went. "You'll need to get a tetanus shot," Boyfriend told College Boy.

The next day, College Boy showed up at work in calf-leather work boots, hobbling like he'd lost feeling in both his feet. "Did you get the tetanus shot?" I asked him, first thing. "Hi. Did you?"

"Yes. My arm hurts. I hurt all over." He said it quite happily, as though it were a privilege granted only to a select few. As an afterthought, he added an awed: "Your sister is really strong."

I passed by his cubicle a few minutes later, glanced in, and discovered that he was now wearing soft, fuzzy bunny slippers over his feet. Poor kid.