Traffic school is pretty much just a state-sponsored adult time out. One is told they're not to leave during lunch or they will not get the certificate. One is told they are not to drink alcohol or get stoned during lunch or they will not get the certificate. Instructors are not to swear. 1990's teaching materials were in full effect, with VHS SNL drunk driving skits giving her a break from the dry erase and throat. My eyes wandered more than once, and to my type, the smart type, they offer money. You're already here, why not get paid??? I'd seriously consider becoming a cheap school professor like the sign offered if I thought I could command the attention and respect of old people. Also, if I could get stoned during lunch.
Outside the hotel breakfast room we were taught in, thin black plastic barriers shook violently around construction areas in what was a consistent downpour. The swimming pool at our Corte Madera hotel had so much tape and imitation coral reef looking concrete rubble around it as to look unplanned. The older men in sailing loafers said if it was the east coast, it'd have been a hurricane. The parking lot was underwater, with a few imported palm trees shaking like on TV. I got in my car and drove through some affluent Bangladesh, and really enjoyed listening to Sugar.
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That night I went to the city and got my shoe back. It seems like longer ago then it was, because I was also in the city Tuesday to give my traffic school certificate of completion to the court. I wore my best suit, black and white to accentuate the Obama for President button with the I voted sticker above the name Obama. I couldn't find my car keys that morning when the polls opened at seven so I took my bike down there to be first in line. I went into Santa Rosa with twenty seven of the 30 Shepard Fairey Progress Obama posters I had printed that morning to put up around campus, keeping three for my car. I fell asleep after the last polling places in Alameda county closed that night, Brandy and anxiousness having much the same effect now.
And now it's what? Thursday? Time to listen to club music out on the porch in the afternoon, sitting, hands in cheeks, sighing repeatedly. I'm liking this sun, but feeling strangely akin to it these moments in the idea that I am a nuclear furnace, and that I am blindingly bright to look at and totally without willpower. I approached a girl I didn't know today who looked at me as I passed her by who was smoking. I said my name was Michael and waited for her to say something, but she didn't and I saw her hairs were all dyed teal so I asked her what she was doing and she said waiting here and then going there to be waiting for a bus. I wanted to be too busy to impose and it didn't feel like my popping her bubble resulted in the immediate deflating discharge of steam and gas I thought it would. Plus, she seemed boring. That's not fair, but I was bored. I drove home and Chris was still painting the house. Turn on the sleeping gas, getting ethereal... The Russian humor page on wikipedia is awesome. Ethnic stereotypes translate from culture to culture as comedic poetry. I am on my own for dinner.
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