Here is just one of the thoughts that flitted through my mind today: my glasses are getting looser. Now, you’d think this is because the earpieces are gradually spreading apart and just need to be bent back into shape. But it’s possible that my head is getting wider. Which is possible, when you think about it. Gravity compresses the discs in our back as we get older, so we shrink. Might also gravity pull our heads down like a cake sitting in the sun all afternoon, slumping our youthful spherical globes into ovals or trapezoids as we get older?
My mind was unencumbered by such profound insights yesterday, as I was too busy wrecking my car. My virtual car, that is. I’ve mentioned here before that I play a rally driving game on my laptop, Colin McRae Rally 2005. It’s a brilliant game and I’ve gone through it several times. But last night I was finishing up a tough series of rallies when I got to Japan, a road course with tight turns and narrow tree-lined mountain switchbacks. And it was raining. I drove like someone who has heard of a car but never actually seen or driven one, and who can’t tell left from right. I ricocheted from railing to railing, ran my car through the trees, made sudden unpredictable swerves into stone walls, went hard left instead of gentle right. To someone else in the room, I was sweating, cursing, and sneering at the glowing screen of my computer, unaware that I’d just flipped on to my roof and skidded off the road a few meters short of the finish line. I often get the feeling my computer co-driver is furious with me. Or embarrassed as we limp across the finish a half minute behind everyone else. But he doesn’t complain when I give him virtual high-fives. And congratulatory taps on the behind after we win.
Writer, architect, father, husband.