On the road

It's hard living in Southern California if you're a non-driver. My oddness in this became more pronounced when I started my commute to Walnut, which at first seemed to me a most suffocatingly suburban city and an unwalkable wasteland. The area surrounding Mt. SAC isn't bad, I'm sure -- I probably just see the blankness of Grand and the endless parking lots saturated with cars and not the wilderness and (maybe) the walking-distance destinations tucked into some undiscovered corner.

I hate driving. It's been on my mind for the last few weeks, now that I'm cramming for the DMV test and practicing. I've been asked by a lot of people why I despise it so much. Why is it that you take the bus to school so far away? What on earth do you do for 90 minutes on those horrible smelly things? It's an honestly innocuous question, but it gets me every time. I bristle and get defensive. It's irrational and rude but I hate to have to justify myself for what is, to me, such a personal decision.

Maybe it's because I don't support myself as my Mountie compatriots do, but I'm keenly aware of what a financial burden my driving would have on my family. I'm always (maybe egoistically) astounded by the costs otherwise perfectly reasonable human beings just get accustomed to: gas, insurance, and maintenance of a vehicle just don't make financial sense when some if not most people can easily do without a car altogether. My bus pass costs $36 a month, and even then I feel guilty asking my parents for that money when I'm already 18 and still at home.

I'm not advocating public transportation for everyone, though. The biggest costs I incur on the Metro are time and, I'll admit, my sanity. I'm probably just desensitized to the stresses of a 90 minute public-transport commute and the constant friction with other people on the bus as the drivers in this world are to the concept of traffic.

I've seen some awful things on the Metro, and my claustrophobia's forced me to (rather rudely) push past the crowd to jump off the bus at my stop, gasping and shaking and near tears. I'm not terribly social and being around so many people is really overwhelming sometimes, especially when the collective mood is tense after a long workday when everyone is tired and grimy and hateful. I came come from school sobbing for the first few days at Mt. SAC.

Driving is another process entirely. I can't jump out of the car when I'm on the 10 feeling the same sense of restlessness I get while on any road. On the bus I can read. I can catch up on my podcasts and listen to the news. I can do my homework and guarantee myself one-and-a-half hours of continuous studying without the distraction of Internet.

There's also the little matter that I cannot kill anybody by simply boarding a bus. Sometimes I feel like people completely fail to understand that they are accepting a shitload of responsibility by taking the wheel of a fascinating bundle of potentially deadly and complex machinery. I'm working toward being a good driver by compensating for my lack of peripheral vision (I'm nearsighted and I wear glasses) and for my own mental problems (I zone out and have trouble paying attention to what other people are doing. Imagine this applied to the friggin' road!), but I seriously doubt that I can master it and not do something stupid and avoidable at some point.

Peer pressure has given in, though. It's increasingly obvious that I need a car if I'm going to be here for much longer, and I cannot hope to find a walker's paradise until I get my act together and move out into the world. I'm learning the workings of driving itself and it's not fun. I'll tolerate it, though; who knows -- maybe I'll find that having control over something on my own will heal rather than harm.