narrow

A few years ago there was several miles of road construction on I-90. The road just detoured onto what I guess was the old freeway before it was wide and straight, but it felt so natural. There's always this fear on detours that you won't know what to do, but this wasn't like that. It just led off the road and you were on this stretch with narrow lanes and no shoulder and wondering how everyone else could go so fast without being terrified.

I drove it a lot in those days, driving west to see my sister. I drove a lot in those days. Every weekend, it seemed, I was going west to see my sister, or east to see my girlfriend. The road east was scary in its own way, where when it was raining or it was dark you couldn't see the lines and there was five lanes of freeway, and I had no idea where I needed to be. I didn't understand a lot about those trips.

Driving west, though, I thought I understood, except after a few times driving west I noticed that the road seemed to be getting narrower. I thought maybe it was because as I drove it more I got more worried about it, but one day as I was heading west the road just kept getting narrower, until there was no road at all, and I was driving on nothing at all, over the canyons and the tumbleweeds in the desert of eastern Washington.

I turned the car off and shifted it into neutral in case I hit the road again, but I just kept drifting for miles and miles. The car finally touched down near Kittitas and I decided to stop in the Dairy Queen outside of and get a Blizzard. I thought about calling my girlfriend to tell her what happened, or waiting to tell my sister. Instead I just told the girl who made my Blizzard, and never bothered to ask myself why. I don't drive at all anymore.