fear and what the hell even matters anyway

 Keep in mind, that when I say "What the hell even matters, anyway?", I don't mean it negatively. For the past couple of years I've subscribed to a school of thought of none of this actually matters so you might as well do what you want--and that's done more for me doing what I want than anything else ever has. 

But this morning it was foggy. I get up every morning, Monday through Friday (until, of course, we have another two people get COVID-19 and we have to go distance again for two+ weeks), at 5:45, leave the apartment at 6:30. Drive my old 1991 Mercury Grand Marquis forty-five minutes to try and raise some kids to a standard of basic literacy. Argue with the kid who's in two English classes due to failing one last year but is actually pretty gifted English-wise into maybe doing his essays. 

But it was foggy. I noticed right away that I had a dense fog advisory on my phone--shit. This last January I was driving back from Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Roadshow in the worst fucking fog in the world--that, mixed with the ice and the slush that other cars kept flinging up onto my windshield turned a 45-minute trip to a 2&1/2 hour one. 

But it's still September. Hell, it's still warm--we had a few days of chillier weather, but these past few days we're looking at upper seventies, about eighty. So there's no ice. And instead of driving into deeper darkness, the sky would lighten as I kept going.

Normally, when I drive to school in the morning, I listen to the Last Podcast on the Left. The radio plays a radio show that I'm not a huge fan of, so I listen to the podcast on the way there, music on the way back. Music on the radio--I'm not looking to eat up all my data two weeks into the month. I didn't this morning. Inclement weather, to me, brings on a need to listen to the radio. The radio will break in and tell me if something's seriously wrong. Marcus Parks from three years ago will not. 

But the fog was frightening this morning. And what's weird is that, somehow, maybe I was just tired enough or something, I dunno, but I wasn't anxious about driving in the fog this morning. I just got onto that interstate and it was spooky. Part of it, I'm sure, is not being able to see. I'm from North Dakota, I'm used to seeing miles in every direction. And now I've got a quarter mile in front of me at the good spots. This is 'look at the lines' kind of fog. And it was just so... closed in. It was isolating. 

There's something genuinely spooky about being isolated on the interstate in the dark. I-94 is a busy highway. Normally you have truck drivers to count on, if nothing else--and yeah, there were still truck drivers. But as soon as they were half a mile away, they were entirely gone. Not even leaving me a taillight to say goodbye to--then I was in this blanket of misty air and I was alone again. It was weird. 

I don't know if there's a lesson here. If nothing else, you know--maybe I'm still young enough to feel that sort of immortality all young people feel, so of course my thought is not that I would actually die from this--going in the ditch would give me a fresh new experience under my belt.