looking out the car window

There’s always something weirdly stuffy about the air in a car you’re not driving. Along for the ride, by choice or maybe by parental decree, strapped into the passenger seat – or worse, the back – knowing there’s nothing you can do about things, so you just have to sit there. Maybe you’ll read a book, or play a game, or sleep. Maybe you’ll try to change the radio station when the driver isn’t looking, maybe you’ll try to organize a sing-along among your fellow passengers. Whatever you do, you’ll get tired of sitting still, of being good. The words in the book won’t be interesting enough, the game won’t be fun enough, the nap won’t be long enough. The radio will repeat itself every hour. The person sitting next to you can’t sing.

The air is weirdly stuffy. Itchy somehow, if air can be itchy, which you’re sure it can’t, but even so, you can’t stop scratching your elbows or your knees every once in awhile. And the world stands still as you roll past, the same and different everywhere you go: you see the cows, the deer, the dogs. The kids with their lemonade stands, the old ladies waiting at bus stops (wearing fur coats even though it’s July), the houses big and small, the strip malls standing where the forests used to be. The fields full of corn and soybeans.

These are all things you’ll never really visit, but it’s good enough. Looking out the car window, waiting to get where you’re going.

January 22, 2008 -- jamelah

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