i left my wallet in el segundo.
Today began normally. I woke at 8:30, thanked those who invented free periods, made lunch, ate breakfast. After a brief struggle jamming binders and books (which I literally had to sit on) into my bag, I proceeded to the garage to start my car. Typically, I park outside, but my dad is away on business therefore the garage was free. As I turn the key forwards I hear the initial sputtering of the engine before it catches and starts. The engine then turns over and everything sounds as if its running. I look to my stereo to see that it's not on, neither are the lights. I turn the car off and on again - same problem. I can drive without music so I attempt to put Sable into gear. The stick is totally locked. I figure that its either electrical or I need a jump. I walk over to the garage shelves to grab cables and an electrical box as the wind and cold eat my hands alive. It is at times like these that I curse living in such high elevation; what good is the view of Mount Washington if you can't open your eyes to see it? I rescind that opinion come Spring.
I call AAA and the truck arrives in fifteen minutes. The truck stops at the bottom of the driveway. I think to myself he's too afraid to drive up; we didn't bother shoveling one inch of snow and I'm not even sure the truck can make the turns because of its size. Instead, the man gets out of the truck and grabs our empty trash barrels, throwing them on the back. My sister must have been overjoyed by the fact she didn't have to walk up the driveway with two vessels the size of her swung around her shoulders. As he pulls up the driveway it occurs to me how little room there is between the garage and the trees. Picture Austin Powers trying to reverse the cart in the hallway of Doctor Evil's desert lair. For such a nice guy, I feel bad he has to do so much work. After ten minutes of spinning tires and frozen toes and destroyed shrubs and saplings, he finally gets the truck into position where he can drag the car out of the garage. Because the car won't go into gear, the tires just skid across the pavement and metal of the truck. Nails on a chalkboard. I climb into the cab.
In a tow-truck, I never imagined luxury, but I would have been completely comfortable sleeping there. Leather seats and enough foot room that I could sit down on the floor with my legs fully extended and still never touch the dash. The height of the cab made everything seem much further away, like the first ten seconds of lift off in an airplane. It was the coolest ten minutes I've ever experienced in an automobile. Generally I consider myself talkative - compared with the driver I was taciturn. In five miles I learned his opinions of New Hampshire traffic laws, education (scarce), political views, and family life. It was hard to read whether he was pausing in sentence to let me speak or simply regaining his breath for another spurt of conversation. I never got his name.
We arrive at Concord Tire on Hall Street. I begin the walk down to my Mom's office with lunch box, sports bag, and backpack in hand. The only hat I could find was from the dollar store, a torn of combination of green, orange and black yarn. Anyone driving by must have thought I was a hobo. I was almost tempted to stick out my thumb and follow in the steps of Jack Kerouac, but my hunger was stronger than the desire to cross the country. As I pass the Sandwich Depot some amazing smell blows through the air. I've driven by the place a thousand times, but today seemed like the right day to go in. There are probably a hundred choices of sandwich painted on the wall. I take forever to decide what to eat, so I just walk up to the guy at the counter and ask for whatever smelled good. Five minutes later I am eating the most delicious roast beef sandwich of my life. I finish the walk to my Mom's.
One of her assistant's, Jody, tells me she's in a meeting. "But it's only a five person public relations meeting, I'm sure you can go in." I peek my head in the conference room and see seven people spread out around the 40 person table. My mom was mid-sentence and stopped short upon seeing me. "I need to steal your car! Mine won't start and I had to tow it!" She agreed as long as I picked her up after practice.
I arrive at school to an economics quiz and the worst AP calc class of my life. I've never been so tired that I couldn't keep my eyes open but today my eyelids weighed ten tons. I awoke intermittently to differential equations, slope fields, and problems with seven variables. Seven variables! I could have understood Chinese better than the math that was written on the board. I must have written "I need a nap" twenty times on my notes, if you could call them notes. Needless to say, practice did nothing to aid my fatigue. I hope I never wake up after tonight.