For thirteen years I’ve driven a car of advancing age. Last month I upgraded from an ’88 Corolla to an ’07. It’s made a dramatic difference in my life. Suddenly I’m willing to take my daughter to her friend’s house. I’m even willing to pick her up. I’m doing that park-at-the-far-end-of-the-parking-lot-and-walk thing. And I’m getting lost.
Not very lost, sadly. I still have those darn responsibilities. So maybe it takes me ten minutes longer than usual to get home from work. And maybe I’ve started mapping out the less-trafficked streets around me so I can do more driving and less stopping. I still don’t wander off for very long. One day soon, though…
This is how my dad learned where everything was when I was a kid. He never did it with my mom in the car, but sometimes when it was just him and us kids, and we were driving along headed somewhere perfectly respectable, he would say something like “you know, I’ve never been down that road.” And off we’d go. It didn’t matter if there were houses, or even people–we stared out the windows at worlds never before seen. Paved road or not (sometimes we weren’t even sure there was a road!) we felt like Lewis and Clark. It was new to us. We’d never seen it before–and neither had Dad. We were discovering it together.
Maybe it was that early training that has always made me willing to take the unknown path. Move across the country to live with relatives I haven’t seen in years? I’ll try it. Make a friend on the internet and invite her to move across the country to share a house? Sounds fun! Help found a publishing collective and put my own books out there? Why not?
You might guess this tends to worry my friends. I’ve had many a conversation about how I need to be more careful. Play it safe. Don’t stick your neck out, we don’t want you hurt. But hurt is a part of life, in my humble opinion. Might as well hurt for choices I’ve made, right?
I don’t always land on my feet. I’ve had my heart broken plenty of times. But I’ve always counted it worth it. If I hadn’t gone done that road, I still wouldn’t know what was there, right? And as I told myself back when I bounced from job to job and home to home, when my heart got stomped or just torn out—at least it’s good for the writing.
As Thoreau said, “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. “
So yeah. KD Sarge, School of Hard Knocks alumnus. Anybody want to go for a drive?