Wednesday

I think it's incredibly important to just be able to say "Fuck it."

There's been a problem brewing in my personality for a while that I either couldn't understand or continually buried so far within my psyche that when it manifested itself I never associated it with the original issue. I'm an angrier person than I thought. You'd never really know it either, because I'm cordial, polite, funny and outgoing. But underneath all of that is a witch's brew of random, seemingly non-important agitators building to an overflowing boil.

Months worth of "Why won't this damn thing open?" or "Where the hell is that noise coming from?" amass inside of me until, one day, when I can't get the aluminum top off of a single serving applesauce, my fumbling useless digits will curl into a fist and I'll just hurl it into the sink at sixty miles per hour. In that moment of insanity, I'll blow off the appropriate amount of steam and then I'll be good for a little while. I'm like Ned Flanders without the "diddily."

Recently, I bought a new set of wiper blades. I usually buy Bosch blades because they've always lasted a good long while. They're more expensive than most of the other options, but you get what you pay for. This set, though, hasn't been good. During the first storm I exposed them to, they flaked off rubber onto my windshield and left streak marks across my whole field of view. Once I scraped the rubber off, they started to chatter. That vomp, vomp, vomp, vomp....screeeeeeeech every single swipe. An hour's drive in the rain with that going on is enough to drive you mad. And it did.

I lost it. I pulled off the road into a rest stop parking lot, tore the blades off their mounts and hurled them into the woods. I watched them careen down into the trees, bouncing off of branches and disturbing the sheltered wildlife, and in that moment, I felt so good. It was as if I told every engineer that designed those blades down to the person that packed them in those neat little plastic holsters (along with anyone who had ever designed anything that didn't work the way it was supposed to) to go fuck themselves. That they had failed me and this was their punishment.

But it wasn't that way at all. As I stood there in the rain on the side of the highway, breathing hard and tasting sweet vindication, a woman who had witnessed my entire mental breakdown from the car parked two spaces over rolled her window down. "What're you going to do now, hang your head out the window?"

The rain was pelting off my face and soaking deep into my hooded sweatshirt. I looked at her, confused for a second, and then looked back at my car. The bare wiper blade mounts looked like an ice cream cone after a kid licks the whole scoop off and it falls onto the ground. The only worthwhile part of their whole existence was gone. Defeated--by my own rage, no less--I went inside to the Mobil station and bought whatever blades they had. Neither of the two I obtained were the correct size and they immediately taunted me, no more than five miles down the road, with their vomp, vomp, vomp vomp....screeeeeeech.

The door not opening at work on the first pull, my computer becoming useless after extensive virus infection, that puddle I stepped in that got my shoe a little too wet, every little thing that added to that ridiculous bubbling cauldron of frustration in my head. If I had just stood back and taken a second to say, "Fuck it," with one of those incidents, I would've just been another idiot driving down the highway with annoying wipers who turned up the radio a little louder and got over it.

"Fuck it, right? They're just wipers."

I need to get there.

Tuesday

Summer's over now, which means that I'm being shoved off of the highway and onto backroads much sooner during my morning drive. I used to be able to make it all the way to my exit on the highway, but now it's like the whole world has been jerked back into reality and they all meet in the morning to trudge the beaten trail together.

I always think it's interesting how so many people are trying to progress in the same direction but yet they have no idea how to do it faster than a snail's pace. Some mornings I hit the road and think that through some miraculous turn of events traffic will be both voluminous and simultaneously forging ahead at a steady clip. But then again, I haven't had coffee first thing in the morning in a while now and it might be seriously affecting my brain. Without fail, there is nothing miraculous about traffic these days, except its undaunting ability to morph me into a frustrated mess behind a fist-pounded steering wheel. So in order to avoid aneurysm, I flee the collapsing hoard, that beacon of vehicular incompetence, and take to slower and calmer roads with whoever else decided that the longevity of their sanity was more valuable than a straight(er) shot to their destination.

The back roads are really nice, though. Perhaps even a little too relaxing for those without a healthy dose of caffeine in their system. I slither between sprawling estates with manicured landscapes and scoot underneath bowing canopies that have tangled, over time, to create miniature tunnel systems that mute the sunlight and disrupt my satellite radio reception. I dodge those small plastic signs designed to look like children warning me to drive slow as I pass the country club's tennis court crosswalk. Very rarely is anyone out that early, but the heated tennis court is still steaming off the morning dew in anticipation. There are school buses that slow everything down, but they dip in and out of so many neighborhoods that time spent behind them is relatively fleeting. A few flashes of the red and yellow and they're gone. The traffic cop at the high school recognizes me now and we exchange waves as he motions me to continue. He's got a wild behavior about him that aides in his ability to usher oncoming traffic in multiple directions but not control his temper when disobeyed. He's laced into a few drivers who tested his patience, always turning back in my direction to shake his head after his angry diatribe and point me on my way.

As annoying as it is to be forced off of the easy route every morning, the back roads give me a chance to prepare and relax before I have to start my day. I don't have to worry about people floating into my lane, or slamming on my brakes to avoid sitting in someone's back seat. My biggest concern is trying to quickly get a look at the sky so my Sirius won't fizzle out as much. Truth be told, if I have to choose between intermittent satellite reception or wanting to punch the nearest living thing once I finally exit my car after an arduous highway excursion, I'll take to the woods any day.

The trick now is to just try and keep it a secret as best I can and let the crazies duke it out along their dotted lines.