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.

Finally, now that I'm sick, I have time again

Space Between

For forty-five minutes in the Veteran's Park parking lot before first period, we could breathe. The one place we felt free to be kids instead of future scientists, lawyers, doctors, politicians or whatever the hell our parents had dreamed up for us. We weren't debaters, national merit scholars, or mathaletes. We were horny teenagers making out with our boyfriends and girlfriends, taking swigs from our sodas spiked with Schnapps, smoking, rocking to the Femmes. It was the little place we'd carved for ourselves between AP classes and parental pressure.

Thirteen years later, and I haven't been able to get back to that place, even for a half an hour. Somewhere to lay on the hood of a car and forget expectations and responsibilities. Forty-five minutes of freedom before reality comes crashing back in.

Flagellation

I'm in the lot. I can't seem to move. What was I here for again?

Suddenly, the dailies have caught up with me. I crank the window all the way down, catching the fall's frigid breeze, cooling my hot cheeks and tense jaw. Finish the cigarette. Listen to the stories. Tears well up against my will. So fucking stupid.

I'm sitting in the Target lot, listening to some damned NPR piece, having an existential crisis.

At Target. Could I please have a little more dignity here? Can I be a little less do-nothing middle class bleeding heart?

LOVE!!!

Thanks. Yours made me flash back to hs and realize the lots most familiar involved waiting for my brother, annoyed. Your version is much more evocative (edit: and very much so. Awesome.) It made me think outside that, and I ended up... at Target. Sheesh.

Wow, this is a great topic. Everyone's -- Deena, Liese, Daisy Jane -- is fabulous, but sarameg's really hit home.

::applauds::

I'm usually in my driveway.