One Of Those Days. Or Two.

The past few days have all qualified as "one of those days." Between having to take care of every aspect of my life (someone normal to date, for one thing, since I don't think I've ever had a good date and the last guy I went out with was a horror story. And a place to live this coming year. And a job so I can pay for the place I'm hopefully living in. Etc.) and having to take care of more immediate things (how am I getting to Lakewood for a good friend's wedding? How am I getting back? Where am I sleeping? Etc.), it was just about the last straw when I had to get fingerprinted for a small summer job I have in July and, after being told to wait half an hour yesterday because everyone was out to lunch, and then being told to come back today because only one person was working there, I was then told today that I have to wait about half an hour to an hour because, again, "I'm the only one working here." Geez. You DO know it takes about two minutes to fingerprint someone, right?

(Phew! Long run on. Everyone take a moment and catch your breath.)

Anyway, while I was waiting, an Indian man came in - also to be fingerprinted - and he was also told to wait. So we talked a little bit. He was very nice. I forgot his name though - something like...Isal? Something like that. Anyway, he asked me if I was interested in business and finance because that's where he works. I said no. He told me he's licensed in 42 states and he's getting fingerprinted to be licensed in another one. I told him that was cool.

Anyway, I'm sure you're all fascinated by our small conversation. Point is, after about 50 minutes of waiting, they finally fingerprinted me. They kept asking me if I wanted to go and come back later, but I decided the only way they'd actually do it is if I sat there waiting for them. So I did.

After getting fingerprinted (again, which took only two minutes), I went to the parking lot of the police station to get my car. I got in the car. Then I started to pull out of the spot.

Now, this has never happened to me before. Ever. So it's just my luck that it would happen, suddenly, in a police station parking lot with a bunch of actual policemen milling around talking. I backed up a bit too far into someone else's car.

I could see the expressions on the policemen's faces. They cringed, as if saying, "whoa boy."

"You want to take this?" one said to the other with a tiny smirk.

The other grinned and said, "sure."

I got out of my car and saw that there was no damage at all to the car I had backed into. Just to mine (my dad's, really). It wasn't even so terrible, but it would have to be fixed.

"Hang on a minute, we're just going to find out whose car this is," the policeman told me. I said okay.

Moments later, a tall, good-looking, intimidating, uniformed man came over to me.

"Hi. That's my car."

I swallowed.

"Oh."

Figures it would belong to a police officer. I must have looked terrified - gosh, I felt terrified - like I was going to be arrested or something. But somehow, I think the officer was even more nervous than I was.

"This your car?"

"N-no, it's my dad's... I'm really, really sorry!"

"Oh, don't worry about my car! My car's good - it's perfect! It's just your car...you're not going to file a report, are you?"

"I...don't think so?"

"Why don't you call your dad and find out. I can talk to him if you want."

"Okay."

So I called my dad, but his phone was off. I called my mom and she said to get the officer's information just in case.

"So, um, my mom said probably not but I have to check with my dad, so can I, um, have your phone number...?"

"Oh, sure!" He handed me his card and I dropped it onto the seat beside me. "I'm working here the next two days, too, so feel free to drop by if there are any problems."

"Okay...thank you."

He left. And then I left. (Very Carefully.)

When I turned out of the parking lot and stopped at a stop sign, I glanced over at the card he left.

It said Detective.

...No way. An actual detective?!

Great. So I backed into a detective's car. And he was worried about me?

Anyway...it's been a stressful two days (/summer, because of all the bigger stuff weighing on my mind). I think I need a hug.

On driving

I drove on the highway. And I drove on the highway in the dark.

But can I drive over a bridge? And through a tunnel? At night???

After a long bus ride???

Can I drive somewhere new? That is tricky to get to? And that is not Serach and Ezzie's apartment? Somewhere I can't visualize in my head?

I want to and I don't want to.

Help!

Excessive amounts of moral support are most welcome because, kinda, I'm, uh, terrified of this prospect.

Why I love the GPS

This is not a long post, nor is it a deep, thought provoking one. I am writing this post mainly to get over my glee of driving to the Five Towns for the first time IN THE DARK. BY MYSELF. AND ON THE WAY BACK, I REMEMBERED TO PUT ON MY LIGHTS AFTER ONLY TWO MINUTES OF DRIVING. AND I DID NOT GET LOST. Wait, wait. Let's make a list:

Accomplishments for Tonight
1. Driving to the Five Towns by myself
2. Driving in the dark by myself
3. Remembering to put on my lights on the way there, and only forgetting to turn them on in the beginning of the way back
4. Not getting lost
5. Knowing my rights from lefts
6. Successfully avoiding the highway even when the GPS told me to go there
7. Making it home in one piece and in a normal amount of time

YOU SHOULD ALL BE SUPER PROUD OF ME.

Control

Fear is something we all have, something that stops us from doing stupid things (well, most of the time). It keeps us focused on where we should be going, what we should be doing, sometimes. For me, I am afraid of losing control.

I am a complete control freak when it comes to myself. I am forever terrified of illness - when you are ill, you don't have control. Oh, sure, you can go to the doctor, take medication, etc. But in the end, it isn't up to you. It's up to God. It's up to how your body handles the illness. People die from being ill and oftentimes, it's not because they didn't try to get better. It's just that whatever they did just didn't work.

This is partly why I am nervous about driving. What if I lose control of the car? Or, more importantly, what if someone else loses control of their car and swerves right into me?

Lately, I have been having daymares (well, like a nightmare only not while I'm sleeping) about head-on collisions, like what happened to my teacher. Yesterday, I was driving home from my newspaper internship and I was in the middle of making a left turn, passing cars right next to me coming the other way in a sort of arc. And for a moment, in the middle of the intersection, there were no lines for the lanes. You just had to go in what had been your lane and what was going to be your lane when you got past the intersection. And I thought, if I turned the wheel just slightly to the left, I'd hit the oncoming cars. That would be bad. There would be a loud crash and it would probably hurt a lot.

Thinking this way shook me up and when I made it past the intersection, I really felt like I had come out of a life or death experience. And in some ways, I had. I chose to stay in strict control of the car. But with the oncoming traffic so close, what if one of them had swerved? What if I sneezed and accidentally crashed?

I don't normally think this way when I'm driving. I used to, when I first started. I used to hear, in the back of my mind, sirens and screaming. That's why I hated driving for so long. Highways are always backed up from accidents. It's so commonplace.

This is what frightens me most about driving, about illnesses, about anything - losing control. If I have control over myself and over what happens to me, I can determine how I will come out of a situation. But if I lose control, it's out of my hands. It's up to someone else. My fate is no longer up to me. And that scares me.

An update or two

Just as a warning to all my fellow Harry Potter fans out there (or, at least, the ones who read this blog), apparently there was a book review in the NY Times about Harry Potter 7. I don't know how many spoilers were in there and I heard that, though there were a few, they were minor, but if you don't want to be spoiled at ALL, I recommend staying away from it. Or keeping it until after you've read the book.

BOOK IS OUT IN TWO DAYS.

In other news, I meant to post this a while ago but, due to all that's happened this week, never did. HOWEVER, this past Sunday it was visiting day in Camp Mesorah and...and...I DROVE ALL THE WAY THERE. FOUR WHOLE HOURS. YES.

[For anyone new to my blog, I am terrified of driving. See this post for details.]

I am still patting myself on the back.

Whoaness - a four-day hodegepodge

I can't believe I haven't written in four whole days. I have a lot to say and not a lot of time to say it in, seeing as it's eleven o'clock (hee, I love writing out the time like that instead of digitally, like, 11:00) and I have to get up at six tomorrow morning. You see, tomorrow is my first day as an intern. I've never really interned anywhere before, if you don't count organizing pictures in a hospital archive for a friend of my dad's. I'm interning at a publishing house for medical textbooks every Tuesday and Wednesday this summer. It should be rather interesting, I hope. And this Thursday I have an interview at a local Jewish newspaper for the other three days in the work-week. I really, really hope that works out.

Speaking of that interview, my parents suggested I take a test drive to the interview spot today just to make sure I can get there without getting lost. Now, I have an awful sense of direction. And I mean awful. And I'm quite good at muddling up directions - which is just what I did. What should have been a seventeen minute drive, according to mapquest, turned into a two and a half hour adventure missing every single street my dad directed me to turn down. I ended up in the oddest places, ran a red light, nearly got into an accident, cried a couple of times while in a sketchy school parking lot on the phone with my dad, got yelled at by the security of the school (for being in their parking lot when the buses were coming soon), and was drenched in nervous sweat. Literally. My hands were wet, my face was wet, my hair was wet. I mean, I don't think I've ever been this nervous ever (and yes, I know I just used 'ever' twice in about four words. I was that nervous). It was my very first time driving out of my community on my own, I was completely lost, I kept getting myself more lost when my dad tried to direct me, and, yeah. Basically, it was a disaster. So we're going to try again tomorrow night and this time, one of my parents is coming with me to make sure I go the right way. I felt like such a complete failure this afternoon.

In other news, tonight was my brother's high school graduation. It was really nice, though some of the speakers spoke for rather a long time. I just cannot believe he graduated. It's weird, his entire life has revolved around high school, the hockey team, different teachers he liked, didn't like, his friends, and now it's over. Time to move on to the next level in life. I hope Israel is as good, if not better, an experience and that he continues to grow and mature and have an awesome time in everything he does.

Lastly, before I literally fall into bed, I've been having an internal debate with myself since high school. In high school, I had some friends declared they would not study secular subjects on Shabbat. I thought about it for a bit, but I really did need to study on Shabbat, or thought I did, anyway, and I never gave that up. It was a perfect long afternoon when I wasn't doing much else anyway - it was either studying, reading, or getting together with friends to eat each other's leftovers and debate over how to spend the afternoon. When I was in Israel for the year, the head of my school briefly mentioned once that he never studied on Shabbat and did well anyway. When I entered college, everyone I knew studied on Shabbat and I totally forgot about the concept that maybe you shouldn't. Until this weekend. This weekend, one of my best friends had some friends over from her college and they were talking about this very idea - studying on Shabbat. She explained to me that although she used to study on Shabbat in high school, she no longer does. Her friend told me that it is blatant hachanah (preparation) for after Shabbat and that a person should not even study religious subjects on Shabbat for that reason. I was flabbergasted. What about reading novels for school? When else do I have time to read for school??? No, he said. Even that I shouldn't do.

I frowned, I furrowed my brow, I reasoned, I rationalized, and I arrived at a dead end. The hachanah argument seems so logical and so obvious, and yet, I know that people study on Shabbat. I know people read for class on Shabbat. And I want to be able to. But am I allowed? Is hachanah for after Shabbat the real reason people don't do it? Or is it because it's not in the spirit of Shabbat to study secular subjects, and therefore religious subjects are okay and even reading secular novels are probably alright?

If anyone can relieve my mind on this issue, it would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

Ok, Crush. I Need To Get To The East Australian Current. EAC?

"Good afternoon. We're gonna have a great jump today. Okay, first crank a hard cutback as you hit the wall. There's a screaming bottom curve, so watch out. Remember: rip it, roll it, and punch it."

That's right. Today I drove on the highway for the very first time. I know, it's probably not such a big deal to most of you out there, but I had a terrible fear of driving for the longest time and only got my license right after this past Pesach, before I went back to school (and if any of you thought you had to take the road test too many times before you passed, just be glad that number of times probably wasn't as many as it was for me). So today my dad took me on the highway and, I have to say, it was FUN. I was really nervous before getting on, and while I was merging on, but once I was on it, it really wasn't so bad. It was sort of exhilerating. And it DID feel like I was riding on a current, like the EAC (ten points if you know what movie that's from, even though it's waaaay too easy. Great movie, though). It hardly felt like driving. More like going along with the waves, you know? The current sort of just pushing you forward. Yeah, you have to watch out for cars switching lanes and all, but going that fast, and straight, and just everything. It was, well, awesome. I don't know how comfortable I'd feel doing it on my own just yet, but a few more times with my dad and it'll probably be no problem.

Now I just need to get over my fear of driving across bridges. I mean, what if a huge truck comes along in the lane next to you, doesn't see you, switches lanes, and pushes you off???