Wandering through Streets

I have a great sense of direction. Unfortunately, that does not translate to giving good driving directions, or at keeping myself from getting lost.

Sam has figured out by now that he can't trust me when I say I can get us somewhere. When we drive somewhere I've been but haven't been recently, I really can't be trusted. We usually end up kind of lost and then kind of getting where we need to go. Eventually.

Sam is not your ordinary man, which is why I married him. He has no problem asking for directions. He'll take the GPS, call our parents, or go into a gas station. No hesitation.

I'm all "no, I swear this will start looking familiar in a second" and "just follow the signs and we'll get there."

Living in Salt Lake City spoils you. It's so easy to get around here. Most of the roads have boring names, but at least they follow the grid system religiously. (That's what happens when a city is founded by religious people.)

Syracuse at large is even easier to navigate. The major streets are straight and they are numbered logically. Better yet, there are no east streets. Everything is west, because Syracuse is so western.

The subdivisions are another story. Most have catchy theme-named avenues and streets and cul-de-sacs. I don't think the developers wanted them to be easy to just wander into. They are private residences, after all. Neighborhoods aren't for finding things easily.

I also appreciate Syracuse because it's flat. Although this makes sledding hard, it makes driving a stick shift significantly easier. The first time I drove a manual for a significant distance by myself was in Syracuse. Sam's car is a stick shift, so I've been learning and I'm alright. The steep hill of Salt Lake still terrify me.

So this time when I drove stick all by myself... it was to Brittni's bridal shower. Do you know why this is significant? Because the first time I drove a car alone was going to Brittni's house for a party. True story.

I'll probably spend the rest of my life going places without knowing the way exactly, but just kind of figuring out. Looking at the signs, making U-turns.

-Meg

I might be a Flunker

[insert rant about my own stupidity.]

I deleted my twitter account today. On purpose, but no clue why. Just did.

I missed my exit on the freeway.

I'm failing my English class. I don't want to talk about it.

Can I start over?

-Me

Freedom

Today, in a valiant but futile effort to make a difference for the environment and my thighs, I rode my bike to school. Usually I drive myself, but the weather was warm and I felt the urge to enjoy the fresh air. It was a new sense of freedom.

I thought back to when I would do anything to have the liberty to drive and have a car all my own. Now I try to avoid driving whenever possible, but when I was fifteen, a license was a ticket to freedom.

But freedom isn’t free. I was forced to journey across student parking to a portable out in the boonies, sit through a class that was a stale as the residue on a McDonald’s counter, copy word for word out of the driver’s handbook, and watch hypnotizing videos.

I didn’t really learn anything from class, but I did learn a lot on the road. My driver instructor was named Coach Buchanan and even though he was married, a lot of girls secretly were in love with him. He was cool… he used his cell phone in class and turned on the hottest hip-hop in the driver’s ed. cars. He coached, of course, as well as taught driver’s education.

Vani and Halden were my driving mates. We began at stark different levels of experience. I don’t know if was just because he was a boy and had natural abilities or he had spent hours of pre-permit practicing, but Halden was drove so well I wondered if he was a NASCAR driver in training. He didn’t necessarily make you feel comfortable while he was driving, but you could tell by the way he handled corners and accelerated that he wasn’t afraid of the road. Vani didn’t have any experience until our first day driving. But by the time I got used the jerking, she had improved a lot.

Then there was me. I’d practiced a little with my parents but that was all. Coach Buchanan would tease me and ask, “Now, what’s the gas pedal for?” And I would answer, over Vani and Halden’s chuckles from the back seat, “to accelerate.” I guess I was a little white-knuckled.

As much as a learned about turn-lanes and passing and putting on the blinker three seconds before you turn, I learned a lot about life. Buchanan may have been on of the most popular teachers in school, but he wasn’t an airhead. He didn’t like us to sit in silence and listen to the grinding beat of the hip-hop radio. One day, when we were doing freeway driving, he brought up a perplexing question, directed to us girls.

“What if your husband tells you he doesn’t want you to be a working mother?”

At first I was very defensive. I said that I would never marry someone that wouldn’t let me be myself and live my dreams of being successful. I could never love someone that asked me to stay at home and live a dreary life of a house wife. My mom worked, but I had to say she was there most of the time for us. Vani said she also supported women working.

Buchanan wouldn’t take that for an answer. “But what if you DO marry someone like that?” I struck back that I wouldn’t, but he persisted. “What if you do?”

We talked for a while, and I dug myself deep into a hole. I mean, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how wrong I actually was. Staying at home probably wasn’t so bad, and what if your husband wanted to provide for the family all by himself? But I couldn’t back out now. For the rest of the drive I argued my case.

Ever since that experience I’ve thought more and more about being a woman in the workforce. As for now, I’m still looking forward to having a career, but there are some things more important than a job, and that’s kids. Overtime I made the conscious decision to be as successful as I can be, but the best work I do will be within the walls of my own home.

I’m in high school – ya. Its weird I think so far ahead in the future, but isn’t that why we come to school? To learn about life, make decisions, and decide who we want to be. Trig identities are cool, but I think perspective is just as important. So in my quest for freedom on the road, I learned that about freedom in life and what’s really important. Stay-at-home mom a constricting job? No way.