Shortstop

My current tormentor in the form of red tail lights slams on his brakes in an overzealous attempt to stop for the yellow light. Anyone with half a set would've gunned it. Such is not my luck tonight. It's been feeling like the middle third of a romantic comedy without the laugh track playing in the background to establish that it's all in fun and the ending will be a happy one. It's hard to imagine how any good can come sometimes, especially without the haunting laughs of that audience recorded in the fifties. They're long dead, but their cheer carries on to falsely console the masses. The circumstance I’ve gotten myself into is quite the opposite.


My right hand shoots over to the passenger seat in a motion so swift that it's strange to admit I'm not used to having precious cargo. There's a new laptop there tonight, though; a gift from five people which I can't risk having damaged. The cardboard box doesn’t slide an inch, never hits my palm-- a false alarm again. “Bitch,” I mutter at the driver ahead of me. “Coward,” I add, my knuckles whitening on the wheel. But it’s not the senile blue-hair in front of me to whom I’m referring anymore; it’s the man who gave me the Emergency Hand Auxiliary Seatbelt Brake-Slam Habit.

It happened frequently, often because he was distracted by a tangent about God. The brown-eyed boy beside him heard elevator music during most of these soapbox sermons, or tried to. His driving wasn’t the best to begin with. We were practically run off the road on numerous occasions. Angry motorists habitually passed us on the right while shaking fists in our direction. I sank into my seat and prayed to whatever God would listen to my pleas to disappear. The embarrassment and road rage were two more crosses I bore as a child in the name of the father and the Father. It got to be too much by age fifteen so I told them so; neither of them taking to it very well, both of them still punishing me for it.

But when the hand flew out across my unformed chest I knew I was cherished, if nothing else-- or maybe it was guilt that drove him. Regardless, it’s clear now decades later that despite all his efforts he couldn’t save me from the biggest threat to my safety: himself.