When I started dating my wife, she lived almost forty miles from me -- the hidden advantage being a long, focused pre-date commute, during which I could practice saying conversational things without mumbling or think up funny comments about things we might have in common.
There was also a long post-date reflective period which, in terms of confidence and self-image, considering the kinds of things I would often say and do on a date, never did me much good. To distract myself, I'd often stop at the Youngwood Sheetz for a sandwich -- even if we'd had dinner hours before (I once had the metabolism of a hummingbird).
So, one December night, I was hurtling down Interstate 70 with a turkey swiss with lettuce on white in one hand, the steering wheel in the other and an opened bottle of Mountain Dew resting in the Gentleman's Cup Holder*.
I was pretty happy that night. The date had gone well, I didn't have to wake up particularly early the next day, and I was now doing my favorite thing -- eating while I drove along on an empty highway in the very early morning. It's exactly kind of experience you imagine and romanticize as a stupid sixteen-year-old while you hunch over the student driver's manual.
I put the back of my sandwich hand on the steering wheel and lifted my drink with the other. This was a 1988 16 oz green glass PepsiCo bottle that clinked against my teeth and numbed the skin of my fingers. It stayed super cold, unchallenged by my car's heater, which, in all the time I had that car, had never seen fit to even exhale on me.
I took a deep, triumphant drink... and then froze in terror as something, some foreign object, passed from inside the bottle to the inside of my mouth, brushing my lips on the way in. There are no words.
It might be worthwhile to pause right here and speculate on the ideal conditions for this to happen.
If you absolutely HAD to be surprised by a mystery agent entering your face, you'd want to be outside, where you could immediately eject your mouthful of everything onto a picnic table, a patio floor or something where you could plainly see what the thing was that had breached your perimeter, and you'd want to have a large area of tall, lush grass behind you into which you could collapse in a dead faint, if it came to that.
Yeah, that'd be great, but I was in this car, a rattling, smokey 1980 Pontiac Sunbird that I'd bought from my friend after graduation, which still smelled like Virginia Slims and hairspray on warm days and had no working dashboard lights. It's tendency to shimmy at fifty miles per hour made it feel very dangerous, in a rock n roll kind of way, despite its modest top speed, which was fifty one. It was the exactly wrong place to have this kind of emergency.
A series of possible actions lept to mind.
I found a stretch of highway shoulder which was clear of deer carcasses and spiney retreads. I was making the interior of my mouth as large as I could, the way you do when don't wait long enough for the pizza to cool down. I was desperately trying to not even touch whatever was in there. My tongue was retracted so tightly against the bottom of my mouth that the pain was causing me to see stars.
I brought the car to a hasty stop and snapped on the interior light. As carefully as the adrenaline would allow me, I put the bottle against my mouth and let everything drain into it. Everything. Mountain Dew, panic spit, object X and a silent prayer.
Things got fizzy as it all re entered the bottle, which added a few exhilarating seconds to my suspense.
When the bottle cleared up, a single piece of lettuce, about inch long and a micron more narrow than the mouth of the bottle, floated to the surface like a river-dead mobster.
I was still a half hour from home. My heartbeat returned to normal after a few minutes. The sandwich tasted richer, smokier, enhanced in the way that mundane life experiences become after dancing on the edge of the abyss.
The Mountain Dew, though, tasted like fear.
Having now Googled the phrase, having found no prior occurrences, and having fallen in love with it, I'm thinking of renaming the blog.)
There was also a long post-date reflective period which, in terms of confidence and self-image, considering the kinds of things I would often say and do on a date, never did me much good. To distract myself, I'd often stop at the Youngwood Sheetz for a sandwich -- even if we'd had dinner hours before (I once had the metabolism of a hummingbird).
So, one December night, I was hurtling down Interstate 70 with a turkey swiss with lettuce on white in one hand, the steering wheel in the other and an opened bottle of Mountain Dew resting in the Gentleman's Cup Holder*.
I was pretty happy that night. The date had gone well, I didn't have to wake up particularly early the next day, and I was now doing my favorite thing -- eating while I drove along on an empty highway in the very early morning. It's exactly kind of experience you imagine and romanticize as a stupid sixteen-year-old while you hunch over the student driver's manual.
I put the back of my sandwich hand on the steering wheel and lifted my drink with the other. This was a 1988 16 oz green glass PepsiCo bottle that clinked against my teeth and numbed the skin of my fingers. It stayed super cold, unchallenged by my car's heater, which, in all the time I had that car, had never seen fit to even exhale on me.
I took a deep, triumphant drink... and then froze in terror as something, some foreign object, passed from inside the bottle to the inside of my mouth, brushing my lips on the way in. There are no words.
It might be worthwhile to pause right here and speculate on the ideal conditions for this to happen.
If you absolutely HAD to be surprised by a mystery agent entering your face, you'd want to be outside, where you could immediately eject your mouthful of everything onto a picnic table, a patio floor or something where you could plainly see what the thing was that had breached your perimeter, and you'd want to have a large area of tall, lush grass behind you into which you could collapse in a dead faint, if it came to that.
Yeah, that'd be great, but I was in this car, a rattling, smokey 1980 Pontiac Sunbird that I'd bought from my friend after graduation, which still smelled like Virginia Slims and hairspray on warm days and had no working dashboard lights. It's tendency to shimmy at fifty miles per hour made it feel very dangerous, in a rock n roll kind of way, despite its modest top speed, which was fifty one. It was the exactly wrong place to have this kind of emergency.
A series of possible actions lept to mind.
- Instinct One: Take my hands off the wheel, pull out clumps of my hair and jump out of car.
Pros: It would all be over very quickly.
Cons: This response might be disproportionate to the crisis at hand.
- Instinct Two: Spray the windshield with the entire contents of my mouth and at least some of the contents of my sinuses.
Pros: Immediate return to familiar state of not having a weird thing in my mouth.
Cons: I'd still be driving, and unable to see where I'm going.
- Instinct Three: Roll down window, spew Mountain Dew and mystery object into interstate.
Pros: I'd only have to keep the thing in my mouth for as long as it takes to roll down or to punch out, dear God yes, punch out the window.
Cons: I'd live forever with the mystery of what the thing was.
- Action Eventually Taken: after a couple seconds of frozen panic, I checked my mirrors, signaled and pulled off of the highway. My plan was to gently empty my mouth back into the Mountain Dew bottle, have a look, evaluate my situation and take the appropriate medical and/or legal action.
Pros: Maximum long-term benefits.
Cons: That's a really long time to have something in your mouth if you are convinced, as I was by now, that the object in question is a severed human finger.
I found a stretch of highway shoulder which was clear of deer carcasses and spiney retreads. I was making the interior of my mouth as large as I could, the way you do when don't wait long enough for the pizza to cool down. I was desperately trying to not even touch whatever was in there. My tongue was retracted so tightly against the bottom of my mouth that the pain was causing me to see stars.
I brought the car to a hasty stop and snapped on the interior light. As carefully as the adrenaline would allow me, I put the bottle against my mouth and let everything drain into it. Everything. Mountain Dew, panic spit, object X and a silent prayer.
Things got fizzy as it all re entered the bottle, which added a few exhilarating seconds to my suspense.
When the bottle cleared up, a single piece of lettuce, about inch long and a micron more narrow than the mouth of the bottle, floated to the surface like a river-dead mobster.
I was still a half hour from home. My heartbeat returned to normal after a few minutes. The sandwich tasted richer, smokier, enhanced in the way that mundane life experiences become after dancing on the edge of the abyss.
The Mountain Dew, though, tasted like fear.
* (The crotch. That's where motorists put their drinks in the eighties, kids.
Having now Googled the phrase, having found no prior occurrences, and having fallen in love with it, I'm thinking of renaming the blog.)
No comments:
Post a Comment