When I was a child I raced cars

                One of the most irritable things about being me, whatever me entails, is how easily distracted I can be. I am often doing something, or nothing depending on your perspective, some online quiz to see which character I am from the Little Mermaid, (the old witch), which irritates me as I’m doing it. How can this be? I wonder if someone has posted an interesting picture of their cat on Instagram? Scanning…nothing. I’ll check again in thirty seconds. I’ll check again in thirty seconds could be a mantra for my spare time.

                I read somewhere that mindfulness breathing is an excellent way of increasing your ability to pay attention. Just focus on the breath. Breathe in, breathe out. Nothing but the breath. (I wonder who Michigan is going to start at the four spot next year if Robinson goes pro? I wonder what she meant by that? Maybe something, maybe nothing? I really need to cut my fingernails, but I can never remember to do it after I get out of the shower, which is really when it’s optimal. Woops. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. (I wonder if its been two minutes yet? Man, two minutes is an eternity, or sometimes it can fly right by. I’m so tired right now….sleep). The problem with mindfulness breathing is that I either a) do it incorrectly, or b) fall asleep. Mind you, pun intended, I sleep like a babe.

                The problem, if problem indeed it is, is that I don’t know what I’m supposed to be focusing on? Art, religion, people, the Olympics, NBA basketball, the stock prices of Royal Dutch Shell, Syria, nation building in Iraq, China, climate change? I suppose the answer is everything, which is both a dilettante’s delight and an honest person’s frustration. I walk down streets, cobwebbed in light. I rap on doors with golden knockers, made in the shape of lions. Most people aren’t home. And when I am invited in to the warmth and the light, admiring the cedar beams that line the roof their small abode, the people have nothing to tell me. We sit in our chairs and trade stories about the weather. After coffee and cookies, the grandmother takes out a shawl and begins knitting. I take my cue, thank them for the meal and wander back into the night, looking for other doors, other rooms.

                When I was four, I used to sit at the top of my driveway and roll hot wheels down towards the gutter. Mind you, I did not push the Hot Wheels. Rather, I carefully placed them at the top of the driveway, holding them perfectly still and perfectly straight with my skilled fingers. When I removed my fingers from the two sides the cars rolled down the driveway entirely under their own power. Many of the cars were imperfect, never coming close to reaching the finish line, the gutter. In general, it didn’t matter what the car looked like, though vans were a bit top heavy and often toppled over. Race cars were often as useless as station wagons when it came to navigating the uneven terrain of our driveway, thin cracks, larger cracks designed to aid the flow of water from our drainpipe. I remember one car in particular: a sheriff’s car, janitorial blue, though faded on the hood and passenger sides from overuse. One of the wheels was slightly dented and had the habit of locking up when the car was released, causing it to travel a few feet before abruptly turning to the right, making a U-turn of destruction into the other cars, who I generally tried to avoid when I released a new one.  

                The difficulty with attaining the gutter was not only a matter of obstacles, but the design of the driveway, which sloped sharply at the top but who’s incline flattened out rather quickly after the cars crossed the halfway point, which involved hopping over one of the large concrete expansion joints without losing momentum or getting off track or heading west as opposed to south.  And, in order to reach the gutter, they’d have to have sufficient speed in order to coast across the hot, flat sidewalk stone that stood between them and glory. I had forty cars or so, and I’d spend hours sitting in the front yard, legs stretched in front of me, in the dappled light cast by a crab apple tree, putting the cars through the paces. The thing about the sheriff’s car is that sometimes it would get hung up as it was making its abrupt turn, and would wind up careening down the driveway in reverse, which it was much more effective at,  before its misaligned wheels would catch, sending it spinning in the opposite direction, sideswiping and rear ending the cars that had stalled out along the way.

                The summers in the valley were white hot. It was the sort of place where you could reasonably fry an egg. I don’t remember being lonely as a child. Do you? Does anyone? I don’t remember being bored or distracted. I suppose the key word in all of this is “remember.” I remember very little. But I do remember this: one day I brought home a small black car with orange flames streaking its driver and passenger doors. And every time, or damn near every time I lined that car up it shot, like a guided missile, like a precision piece of German manufacturing, down the driveway, making a beeline for the gutter. And, in so doing, making the other cars, many of which I’d had for years, loved and treasured for their inadequacies because it was shared by all my cars, now obsolete.

                I’m sure that my memory is wrong here, but I think I gave up sending cars down the driveway a month or two after I purchased the little black car with orange flames. Perhaps it was because the long, hot days of summer were over, and I went off to kindergarten. Or perhaps it’s that the small black car took the fun out of the game. The strange thing is, and maybe this is all I’ve been trying to say, that I don’t remember the black car that raced down the driveway as my favorite. No. I remember that blue sheriff’s car, trying gamely, forward, backward, sideways, smashing into other cars, trying like some wounded bird in a dream of flight, to make its way down the driveway, to its own version of heaven. That particular car never made it down to the gutter, but what fond memories, what warm, sweet afternoons I spent watching it try.