Easy

Day 6: I was up earlier than usual today hoping to get to campus early enough to have breakfast and relax a bit before class. The roads were treacherous with ice and snow and I wasn't on the road 5 minutes before I fully spun out as I applied my brakes coming to a stop at the bottom of a gentle decline. 

I went into the opposing lane and, as I rotated, saw a school bus behind me. By the time I was facing them, the kids were all standing and staring, their paws pressed against the windows, their vicious little hearts straining and pleading for carnage. 

Instead I came to a stop at the bottom of the hill in the opposite lane facing the right way, as if I had stopped in the middle of the road. The school bus crept by cautiously, each child savoring their chance to burn me with an impotent gaze of disapproval. 

I had been traveling at a reasonable rate of speed but took the hint and proceeded down the road, this time with exaggerated caution. 

Near Bolton on U.S. 44, I was cut off. Without even thinking about it, I flipped the offending driver the most righteous and glorious of birds, ornamented by a waterfall of top-shelf profanity. The driver turned to acknowledge me for only a moment, but it was long enough for us to make eye contact. As I exhaled a well deserved, "Well played, Captain C*ckoppotamus!" I simultaneously recognized the other driver.

It was my political science professor. 

He slammed on the gas and sped down the road, occasionally stealing glances in his rear view mirror. I had no choice but to follow. 

And I was sure it was him. He had stared back at me with glistening frightened eyes for only a moment but there was no mistaking the man. As I rode slowly and now even MORE carefully behind him, I specifically remembered him referencing driving down this road to get to school, and how he had trouble navigating it. Great.

Eventually, he continued down 44 toward 195 and I detoured up Hunting Lodge Road. I don't have class with him until tomorrow. And he doesn't know what I drive. I'm hoping he thinks all black people look alike.

I skidded a little (but only a little) turning on to North Eagleville Road. "Easy, Drew," I said to myself, and bargained that I'd get some peanut butter cups if I managed to make it to class alive. 

* * * * *

Someone must have sent out a memo, because my professors all took time to explain their nigh indecipherable syllabuses. I thought I was having trouble because I'm "old". Turns out, their syllabuses were terrible. It was a strange way to have my confidence boosted but I took it. 

The day ended with me sitting in Stats, trying to determine the point of origin of the hanging cloud of Axe Body Spray. A girl next to me started talking. "She's just saying what's in the book, but like... she's explaining it." She paused, chewing on a thumb nail. "We don't even need to be here."

"That's a bad idea, sweetheart," I said, never looked up from my notebook, but she had already stopped taking notes and had turned her attention to Words with Friends on her iPad mini. 

I turned to the student on my right, hooking a thumb at the girl to my left. "She's not going to last long."

The student leaned over and whispered, "I don't think we have to be here. Everything she's going over is in the book."

I shut my mouth, and returned to taking notes.