Drive, Incubus

I stepped into the car and was immediately assaulted by the smell of crayons. My knees hit the bottom of the front dashboard and if I leaned forward less than 45 degrees, my forehead would have touched the top. No one was in the backseat. As I put my hand to the side of the seat to adjust the positioning, I debated whether or not I should move to the backseat. Carsickness in a small vehicle that smells like crayons is not ideal - I decided against the move. It's not like I'm prone to carsickness or anything, but it's happened enough times that I know I don't like it. As the passenger side seat moved millimeters back, the driver stopped me.

"That seat needs to stay there so the person in the back can have enough room," she said. I don't know if it was her slightly condescending, parenting tone, or the early hour or the smell of crayons, but I regressed. I became 5 years old and lucky to sit in the front seat. I stammered out a response and she looked at me, eyebrows raised and I straightened my legs as much as I could so my knees were not jammed against the front of the car. My ankles can take the pressure; my knees can't. I could not move for the entire drive.

I remembered that scene from Alice in Wonderland, the Disney version. The Disney cartoon version, that is. Where she eats the cake and grows too large to fit in the house and her head and arms and legs stick out. It was hyperbolic, but what five year old isn't.

It's funny how being a passenger of an unfamiliar car can make you reflect. In that car, I was five different ages, with seventeen different people in six people's cars. I was in the back seat while boy I liked rode shotgun and we were driving out to Norris Geyser Basin while a stranger drove. Mustering up the courage to place my hand on his shoulder, he shrugged it off so nonchalantly. He kissed me that night, but the next week, I saw him with his real girlfriend.

I was seven, sitting in the big bench backseat of our family's old Suburban. One of the originals. Not the first backseat, mind you, the way back seat. We were driving home from meeting our first family puppy - a baby Australian Shepherd, with two blue eyes and half a mask. We discussed names and finally landed on Sallie. With an i. e.

I was getting a ride back from Mammoth, that second season, after I had crashed my car, flipping it on black ice. I shouldn't have had to drive - my car wasn't built for the storm we were in. It wasn't just the loss of the car that hurt - my passenger and myself were fine, only a little shaky. I had just realized that people I thought were friends weren't. At the moment, it hurt, but I realized soon after that they weren't people I needed in my life, let alone wanted there. It was for the best. I just wish I had known that before my car had become a casualty.

These memories were old, faded and yellowed at the edges. I rarely think of these things, but when I do, it's crisp and fresh and real. I can smell the sulfur, feel my excitement of finally having a puppy and the realization of falseness. The memories you push down or ignore that, the times they do bubble up, are the most realistic. The smells come back, the tastes and the feeling in the pit of your stomach, of excitement or remorse. I must be the only person that smells sulfur in crayons.