Hello in there

If you let it, a long, lonely, high-speed drive on the open highway can clear your mind. Or, I should say, it can clear away the cobwebs that get in the way of lucid thought.

Driving on the highway alone can be lonely, but it can fill you up with ideas, remembrances, wishes, and dreams. An empty car and loud music and the grinding hiss of tires on pavement can create a magical environment that allows you to shed the skin of social expectations. I know, it sounds melodramatic. But I mean it. For me, personally, there's too little time for introspection. That's not true. There's plenty of time for it, but there's too little demand for it. I know I want to think, to consider, to wish, to wonder, and to mull over life's intricacies and oddities. But I rarely go there. The open road, though, compels it. I have no choice.

The road insists I think about what might have been, what could have been, what should have been. If you see an aging myopic geezer, with graying hair, driving a ten-year-old family sedan down a lonely Texas highway, look closely. If his eyes are glazed with tears and his face looks like he's remembering what he failed to do, it may be me. Or it may one of a thousand aging men who, just now, are realizing they let the world shape them instead of shaping the world.

All of us, though, geezer and teen alike, still have a chance. Grasp the geezer's hand and offer to help. Lead the teen toward knowledge. Another John Prine tune comes to mind. Say 'hello in there, hello!'