My old man once marveled over the splendor of our domestic highway system–just the idea of laying pavement from sea to sea, he explained, was astonishing–and to this day I recall his wonderment, whenever I hit the asphalt. He also outlined, in broad strokes, how best to handle cops, should they ever pull you over for enjoying these majestic turnpikes a little too much, and this discussion has also served me well.
I got tagged with my first speeding ticket about three-and-a-half years ago. 86 in a 70. You never forget your first ticket, after all, and technically I was going 92, but my radar detector saved my bacon by granting me a few precious seconds to ease up on the accelerator. Honestly I thought some dude was following me, which prompted me to pick up the pace and try to lose my tail, only to discover the tail in question was an unmarked police car.
Do I speed because it saves time? Absolutely not. The number of minutes reclaimed is nominal at best and, if I’m being honest here, a terrible trade-off for safety. Do I speed because it feels great? Yes. Guilty as charged. (And that’s precisely what you shouldn’t say to the popo.) Why do traffic jams, texting drivers, and poor lane discipline annoy? I think it’s because roads were made for movin’. Velocity is a kind of covenant with the road, and any slowdown amounts to a violation of it. But we’ve spoken about this idea before, so I don’t plan on rehashing it so soon. No, I want to discuss what happens when the long arm of justice reaches for you. That’s for Thursday, though, which means you’ll want to hightail it back here for the rest of this conversation. And if you happen to pull in here with a rolling stop, well, you’ll find no judgment from me.
In every to-do list, a few renegade items will invariably band together and refuse to be completed, and just starting them, never mind finishing them, requires a herculean amount of effort. New tasks will come and go, but these holdouts remain rooted on the list for months on end, evergreen in their neglect. I’m certainly guilty of harboring a few of these myself, ranging from changing my air filters to renewing my passport. But the biggest one of them all is making my townhouse presentable.
I could entertain at a moment’s notice, once upon a time. Now, between a pile of computer parts and some boxes my old man dropped off prior to leaving the country, there is work to do. Normal people, for instance, don’t have a motherboard sitting on the coffee table. There’s cleaning to be done, stuff to eBay, desktops to build, clothes to donate, and possessions to discard. None of these tasks are particularly difficult, and the challenge lies in finding the wherewithal to begin.
I’m under no illusions that I’ll be able to cross off any of these to-dos this weekend. A thorough vacuuming, top to bottom, would amount to a room-by-room sweep normally reserved for SWAT personnel, complete with close quarters combat techniques. No, I’ve set the bar much, much lower. If I can accomplish something, anything, I’ll be content. One bag, one box, or one room. All it takes is that one drop-off at Goodwill, and revolution is at hand.
When you’ve already written your resignation letter in your head, seen the blinking cursor inch forward as it spells out your marquee sentence, it probably doesn’t bode well for your tenure. The tenure, in this case, would be continued participation in the alumni association. Now, let me be clear: I haven’t jumped ship yet, and I’ve left myself ample runway to change course, but my blunt initial assessment? It’s time-consuming and costly, with benefits that can only be tenuously correlated–much like the alma mater itself, basically.
It’s relentless. The inaugural event hasn’t even cooled off yet, and it’s already onto the next thing and how to attract the maximum number of attendees to it. But when I step back, really ask myself what the purpose of this community is, it’s to stimulate donations, is it not? It’s this idea that these activities will somehow rekindle those feel-good memories of an era that, frankly, is over, and in the process you’ll willingly part with some more coin. That’s my old self speaking here, anyhow. For the briefest moment, when I was knee-deep in drafting an invitation e-mail, I reasoned that it’d be far easier to just write a check and avoid the work, until I realized that–guess what?–I have obligations to do neither.
So how does all of this affect the new social tapestry? For one thing, I think there’s a distinction to be made between a given community and the people within it, and you can enjoy one while merely tolerating the other. Additionally, I suspect this excursion into sociability has lasted so long because I’ve really just been trying to acquire new interpersonal skills and capacities, rather than the usual suite of impersonal abilities. This may very well be the case, because it’s not like you can emerge from a cocoon, after all, as a completely new person. You change the things you can, and the things you can’t, you make your peace with them.