Don't Look at Me

When driving, I tend to believe that I am insulated from the rest of the world -- I'm alone in the one thing in this world that I own free and clear. It's just me and the Truck of Malfunction (heretofor known as the TOM). It never really dawns on me that just because I'm in the car by myself, that doesn't mean other people can't see me.

Usually, this is not a horrible problem. Yeah, I may sing along to the radio and do little dances on occassion (that occassion being All the Damn Time) but whatever. I mean, how do people know that I'm not just talking on one of those hands-free phones or maybe a spider just crawled down my shirt and I'm dislodging it -- whateva, all you people judging me for dancing in my car, you don't even KNOW ME!
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Ahem. I seem to have fallen off track here. Point being, I may seem a little weird at time whilst driving, but it ain't no thing. Usually.

So the air conditioning system in the TOM has, you guessed it, malfunctioned and only spews incredibly hot air these days. Living in Dallas, this is a very bad thing since the weather in the summer on a mild day can be nicely referred to as Scorchingly, Brain-numbingly, Freaktastically Hot. The only way I survive trips in the TOM is to open both windows and let the blistering wind of downtown pollutants waft around my body to dissipate some of the heat that is slowly melting me.

This is all careful buildup to this last Monday...

Oh wait, before we get to the story proper, we have to go over one other fact that I generally take for granted that you, my constant and ever so attractive readers, know -- namely, I am a huge dork. HUGE. I tell you this now to lessen the blow that is soon to come when I explain exactly how big of a dork I actually am in practice.

So last Monday I'm driving home from work around 5:30-ish right in the middle of Dallas rush hour traffic from hell. It's ugly, as usual, and the fumes of the highway are even greater than normal and we seem to be completely stationary in traffic. I try to take my mind off of the situation at hand by flipping through the radio to find something pleasant to listen to. I happen up Britney Spears' Toxic, a lovely song of which I am a great fan.

Now, I may have sung along with this song, in beautiiful falsetto. And I may have done a few impromptu dance moves in the limited confines of the TOM, including some excellent judo chops and head bobs. I really don't recall, my memory, she is not that great, especially about such situations. All I know is that I enjoyed the song to it's fullest.

Following that song there was some horrible song of pain which I could not stand, so I switched over to the classical music station to cleanse my palate. They were playing a particularly excellent version of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody On A Theme By Paganini and once again, I may have gotten into the music a bit. I may have hummed along, or sang with some of the more exciting parts. I may have conducted the music with a little imaginary baton and banged on the steering wheel in time with the music. And I may have done all these things simultaneously while rocking-out like some teenager at a Limp Bizkit concert. I just don't recall, it's all such a blur.

I do know, however, that near the end of the song, I happened to look out my driver's side window and realized that the people in the car next to me were staring at me. Not just staring - I mean mouths-hanging-open-sheer-horrified-train-wreck-can't-look-away staring at me.

It is at this point that I realize that my windows are open and that my usual antics may be more publically available than the norm. And since the staring guys in the next car over had their window open, I well imagine they've been privy to most all of said antics, seeing as we haven't moved in about 8 minutes.

I quickly go over my options and decide that it's really time to cut my losses and run, so I stop the singing and dancing, slump down in my seat, and burn in shame while praying for God to either get traffic moving or to smite me from the earth.

God chose to move traffic and I learned a valuable lesson about not being a dork when you have the windows rolled down. But really, I should have known better: Britney Spears and Classical Music? With my luck, it's like tempting the Gods.