Always Dangerous
Backing your car out is what,
asks the state of California
on their written driver’s test.
I got it wrong. California says
that it is D, always dangerous.
I chose B, that backing your
car out is safe only when you
do it with caution. If I wrote in
always, I would be more right,
I can think of ten examples
in which backing out is no threat
to any creature or object,
like when the parking lot
is empty and fenced in, when
I have already checked that
no cat is sleeping beneath
the car’s warm belly, that
the gravel is sturdy enough
to hold the car and that
no asteroid is shuttling out
toward Earth right now.
Even today, pulling out of
the faculty lot at the same time
as the car next to me was
not a dangerous situation.
The professor next to me braked,
and held out an empty hand,
palm up, go ahead, and finished
singing along to the song I could
hear through our closed windows:
Everything, everything will be
just fine, everything, everything
will be alright, alright.
So funny! Be careful backing out today Hannah :-).
ReplyDeleteHaha...nice professor! You are not living in CA anymore. Here instead of braking the professor would bark, in fact, when I saw brake my head read barked. : )
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree that backing out is not always dangerous but for some it is.
Very funny indeed! : )
This does exactly what a great poem should do - it presents the commonplace, the mundane and locates the universal. I've nicked it for my 'Other People's Flowers' folder.
ReplyDeleteState governments and bureaucracies are notoriously lax in incorporating pop songs into their thinking. This is unfortunate.
ReplyDelete