Remember Grasshopper--real life is not bumper cars

Some day I’m going to buy myself a big fat present--whatever I want--as a reward for teaching 4 kids how to drive.

I’m on the 4th and last. Today was his first time ever behind the wheel. It was different on several counts.

For one thing, the first 3 were girls. I realize this doesn’t apply to all girls, and I can name a few exceptions, but I find that--in general--girls are predisposed to not want to crash into things. There is, very often, just this primordial sense of caution in females which Y chromosomes, apparently, eradicate. So, as we’d lurch to a halt 3 inches from a sapling, he’d guffaw instead of freezing with that deer-in-the-headlights mien. So I would point out--again--that the consequences of not keeping your vehicle clear of other objects are generally negative. And he would laugh--again--and speculate about what you’d do if a full-size house suddenly burst through the pavement in front of your car.

We are starting out in a stick-shifted Soobie. Before, I have taught the girls basic driving in an automatic before we’d tackle the manual transmission learning curve, but I decided to jump into the frying pan right off the bat this time. After all, if kids prior to the 60’s did it, why can’t Gabe? Right. And he did very very well. Honestly. In 30 minutes of driving around the Community College parking lot there was only one instance of that lurching jerking stall-out that so characterized the girls’ early trials. And there was absolutely no discernible frustration. But here’s something that hadn’t occurred to me before today. When you are so focused--in your first lesson--on acquiring the moves needed to start, shift to second, shift to third...there is less cranial capacity available to allocate to basics such as gauging turning radius, lane position, comfortable U-turn velocity...the sorts of things which are pretty much all you’re thinking about in your first automatic transmission experience. So it may be this as much as gender which precipitated our close encounters with several trees and stop signs.

At any rate, 30 minutes was about all I could handle for today, but taking it slowly and steadily over the next year seems a prudent approach anyway. Driver’s ed is scheduled for October, and it’s entirely likely that the kid will hit his 17th birthday, next April, before we actually ink the license deal. And therein lies one more difference between Gabe and his sisters. He himself is as indifferent as he could be. Not that he didn’t enjoy the experience--I think he did. But there is quite obviously no fire in his soul to acquire the license, hence, there is no tugging on the reins required of me. Taking it slowly will suit everyone as far as I can tell.

In fact, I will pretty much have to blackmail him into taking the online practice theory tests 30 or so times until he knows every question inside and out. Because when we go to the DMV to score that learner’s permit, there will be no chance of his flunking the test and my having to appear in that mob one time more than necessary.

I have a fantasy called “drivers’ camp.” You’d send your teenager to...I don’t know...the middle of Nebraska, where’d they’d spend a month or more being taught by professionals who’d send them home trained, licensed, and ready for the Washington Beltway. Or at least Severna Park on a Saturday.

Life always makes me say "oh."

What does it mean when you can actually feel the mental brick wall you keep having to bash through when you’re on a steeply pitched uphill learning curve? Fie on USPS barcodes and the pony express pony they rode in on. Are there people who absorb new levels of technical complexity with ease, or does everyone’s brain hurt now and then?

For my next trick, I will help Olivia get her new MacBook up and at ‘em. What wonders await? (Frankly, this should be easy. It’s my...what...8th Mac set-up?) But even remembering where the heck I put the Office:Mac install software seemed taxing...as it does every time. Had we not missed exercise this morning, I could have aching triceps to balance my brain.

Here is one good and unexpected thing: We got, with the Mac, a “free” iPod Touch, and “free” printer. Which means not really free right then and there, but there’s a rebate. I hate rebates. I hate rebate forms. Usually you need 3 receipts, a UPC code sliced off the actual box, several copies of everything, and reading glasses to fill in all the numbers. But I have never experienced such a quick and simple rebate submission as the online Apple one I did this afternoon. Go to apple.com. Enter receipt id#. Hit go. Done. This is something Apple is definitely doing right.

Today 3 tuition packs came in the mail, from St. Mary’s. 3? Wait a minute...didn’t someone just graduate? I remember something about a blue mortarboard and rain...but there it is, on my desk with the undergrad ones: Math for teachers. Exceptionality. Educational Psychology. So, does this mean we maybe are thinking about the Masters in teaching? Thank goodness I’m not the first to find these things out. What a burdensome drag that would be. (smirky smile at Zoto, who will read this.) At least I was only the second to find out that I may keep all children on my health insurance policy until they are 25. No, seriously. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I mean, if your brain explodes like mine is about to (thanks to postal barcodes) and we have to replace it with silicon, (which could be pricey I’m guessing,) it will be much cheaper if we just have insurance on you in the first place.

We had Chipotle for lunch. We like Chipotle. We do not eat there infrequently. It tends to be busy, and your orders are processed individually, assembly-line style, as you advise the Chipotlers on what else they should toss on your tortilla. I got to the the cashier, people piling up behind me. There is my burrito, waiting. I turn to Jeff, behind me. “Which is your salad?” I ask. “I haven’t ordered yet,” he replies. But wait. He’s behind me. We’ve reached the cashier. We’re 12 feet from the person he was supposed to tell, and the throng is getting heavier. I say to the guac-girl “He forgot to order his salad down there.” She seems to understand, issues a quick command to the guy at the starting end, and they’ve fixed the flub in fifteen seconds flat. It went well. Later, Olivia says to me: “That’s why you make Jeffy go before you.” Yes, indeed.

we accomplish some stuff

Tonight Tyler bribed Gabe into learning how to shave by promising to play Super Smash Brothers afterwards. I listened from the stairway as Gabe was coached through the steps...women’s shave foam because (said Tyler) it’s softer and smells better, and (and here’s something I didn’t know as I have yet to shave a face) never go sideways--always go up or down. So, I am grateful to have that rite of passage broached by someone more in the know than I. So one more thing is added to the arsenal of hygiene functions which--while he may not employ them to best advantage now--Gabe will at least have the wherewithal to accomplish.

Here’s what I’m exceptionally bad at: Dance Dance Revolution, aka DDR. Like most forms of digital entertainment, it requires much more mind/body coordination than comes easily for me, so it takes quite a bit of determined rewiring to bumble my way through anything involving a screen and associated physical responses. Come to think of it, I have the same problem with my fiddle. Committing anything which requires even moderate dexterity to memory--and muscle memory--is an arduous process. But doing so anyway seems better than accepting slothlike reflexes as the unbreachable status quo. The thing is, I just made up the word “unbreachable” apparently, but it seems to fit.

hodge podgerie of dumbness

Some things are too idiotic to make public. Some people are idiotic enough to make them public anyway. I’m trying to decide (and, being of the above-mentioned ilk, admitting to it) whether I’m really going to find myself as directionless as it looks like soon. And what does one do with finding oneself a) not in the market for a job in the classic sense, b) without young children in need of attention, and c) with an (a)vocation which appears to have been proven untenable?

Many people might have an answer to that, and that’s partly because their vocations are not--or have not yet been demonstrated to be--untenable, so they still maintain a vision of pursuing them. But for the purpose of this exercise, you must assume your vocation has been ruled out. What then?

I can do some unilateral brainstorming and propose a few things.

I could become a scholar. I don’t know if it will work. My attention and focus have been pretty sketchy lately, but there’s much I want to study, in theory.

I could let other people hand me their ideas of fulfilling (or at least useful) volunteer work, but, frankly, I have enough and don’t want more. Nor do I want someone else’s idea of what I should do. It has to be at my instigation, useful or not.

As for fiction...it’s creative hiatus time. I’m just going to be working on other stuff for a while.

Sell Apple/Buy Bucyrus? I hate buying/selling. Makes me feel so...imprudent. And yet, and yet--if it is the one thing Mr. J is able to take a meaningful interest in and the proposed exchange has the hallmarks of a sound buy/hold decision and it’s a shift away from a more volatile industry...well, ok then. Ok.

Who’s up for another crack at Wagon Wheel in August? Me. I want to put the fiddle riffs where they belong. And this time we have to sing. Yes. Really. We’ll sing it. I’ll harmonize. It won’t be that bad.

Anyone want a lichen-hued, pollen-covered, nonoperational minivan? Right. Thought not. (No, you can’t jump it either. But you can call AAA and have them tow it to Hondaman.)