Meeting Point
Trace a circle with your finger, it appears never ending. Unbroken, the circle is complete, center and limits of its own universe, nowhere to go despite its infinite length. A tangent is a line that intersects that circle at just one point without breaking the circle. It exists simultaneously as part of the circle and apart from it. No matter the length of the line, there is just the one tangent.
Fortunately, my car wheels don’t care that there can only be one point in common with the road and they take me on endless tangents to anywhere I want to go.
Challenge #136 (circles) is now closed.
Challenge #137 is in the parking lot.
In the Parking Lot
It was after hours on a Saturday evening, and the parking lot was empty. A blank canvas of blacktop, neatly divided by faded white lines. Dad had waited until it was perfect weather, nothing slick or slippery on the pavement to trip me up.
Nothing but our impatience, the trait that linked us more closely than even our features. None one ever mistook us for anything but father and daughter.
“No, don’t slam on the brakes. Honey.”
“I didn’t. Daddy.”
“You want to turn now. Now!”
“I am! See?”
He did. He saw me driving away from him one day.
Aw, man. I think you broke me.
Parking lot driving lessons. I remember them well.
Aw! No breaking! Sorry.
Driving lessons were the first thing that came to mind when I saw the topic. Good times. I love my dad, but he is an AWFUL teacher. As am I.
Young, broke, my new friends and I bonded quickly. I’d been a nice girl, and they loved teaching me their rituals. The late-arriving thus fervent convert, I smoked well, drank hard, and shared the good pot.
“Are you serious? Backward?”
“Fuckenay! Want to?”
“Okay, sure!”
He threw the truck in reverse and floored it. I screamed laughter as his old beater spun around the parking lot.
A couple days later I got up the nerve to approach him.
“Wanna go do backwards donuts?”
“Are you crazy? That shit’ll get you killed!”
“You’re the one who taught me!”
“I was drunk!”
after
My tank strap slips as I climb out my car window. Midnight breezes stream through the cornfields and my hair. Shrieks of laughter echo amidst honking horns, a thousand engines starting.
I always wait until the end; I love to watch the machinery come down, the magic dismantled and loaded onto trucks. That means I have to fight epic parking lot battles, but I love those, too. Watching everyone flow blissfully back into their lives.
But for now, I sit on my car. The headlights turn into taillights and I rest in the dwindling glow. It was a good concert.
