Windows of opportunity

Happy Tuesday, mis amiguitos. It's good to be back in UOPTA Land, which is like Candyland, but far less delicious. I want to thank Stacy for her excellent job stepping in yesterday while I was indisposed. I'm now disposed, so let's gets crazy and jump right in.

Thanks to traffic, I was in the car for quite a while on the way to Big Bear last Thursday afternoon. I was driving, and some of the roads were precipitous (as my lovely wife likes to say), so I didn't get a chance to do that much sightseeing in the process of getting to our destination. You know, safety first and all that crud. However, it got me thinking (uh oh) about the way I used to pass the time on long drives from the non-driving seats.

As a kid, I usually had the benefit of sitting next to my favorite brother, Kevin. Not only that, but we interacted a lot with our parents, so it wasn't like I was bored out of my mind and desperately in need of something to keep my attention. Still, a little extra mindwork never hurt anyone.

Sometimes I would simply count the number of call boxes during the freeway portion of our rides. I don't know how that proved to be an effective way of passing the time, but it did. "Hey look, there's another one. That makes 63!" There wasn't too much suspense in that pastime, unless I screwed up counting somehow. The best thing that came from that activity was a sense that if I ever broke down on the highway, I wouldn't have to walk too far in either direction to call someone for help. Potential help from hypothetical car trouble should never be the high point of any game.

Then I got a little more creative in my out-of-window gazing. I've never told anyone about this before, so consider yourselves very privileged. I created a game called The Runner, which involved a guy running. (I did say "a little more creative," mind you.) I imagined a guy not far from the window running along side the car. If we passed a car, he jumped up on its trunk and walked along the top of it before getting back to the road. If our car stayed even with that one for a while, he might lie down for a second to catch his breath. Occasionally he'd get very acrobatic and do a quick backflip over a car passing us on that side. This kept me entertained for a couple of years' worth of car rides.

I ran into one problem with this game, and it was all my fault. For some reason, I once thought of him being attached to a pole on the side of our car to always keep him the same distance away. I didn't like the way that looked at all though and wanted to go back to the original way. My problem was that I couldn't erase that pole from my imagination. It kept reappearing every single time I'd start having him run. I'd try to make it disappear by having him lag back a little, but it just bent to stay with him. I know how weird this sounds, but I just couldn't unimagine that one part of what had grown to be a rather enjoyable game for me. Right about now you might be understanding why it's been a private game up to this point in my life.

As a grown up now, I've moved on to a different game that I like to play on long rides when I'm a passenger. (Can I make "to passenger" a verb? I wasn't driving, I was passengering. It can be pronounced "passen-jeering" if you think that makes it better. I kinda like that more. Do I digress? Damn right I digress.) So what does Grown-Up Peter enjoy? As our favorite Danish prince would say, "Words, words, words." And class, where do we find words while driving? That's right: signs!

My friend and former co-worker Leslie taught me this game, and I've had a frickin' blast with it. It's very simple: you take the name of either a city or freeway exit and use it in a sentence. The hard part is that if there are real words involved, you can't use them as themselves. For example, if there were an exit called Oak Hill, you wouldn't be able to use either word in that incarnation. So instead, I might say, "If you give Harry Potter his invisibility clOAK, HILL disappear." See what I mean? Fun for the whole family (if your family is full of word nerds, that is). Depending on how far-fetched the sentence is, I sometimes need to adopt certain accents to make it sound a little better. That adds even more fun to the already fun equation.

A few years ago, Kevin and I were driving to San Diego to meet up with our parents. We played this game for the ride down, and I can only remember one of my sentences. The town was Leucadia, and after several minutes of thought, I said this: "The final tally for the Star Wars football game was Luke 80, a lesser Stormtrooper team, 35." That was a tough one. Let's see if I can come up with another one for that same place. "Ricky Ricardo loved to sing his hit Babalu. Katie, a backup dancer, swooned every time." Booyah Johnson! I need to take long drives more often.

Like I said, my friend Leslie taught me this game, and there's a fantastic story that goes along with it. On a trip up north, she and a carload of friends were making all sorts of sentences with the signs. One friend's new boyfriend had been real quiet the whole time, so they said, "Why don't you take this next one. It's Big Sur." He was quiet for a minute, and then he excitedly said, "Ok, I got one! 'Let's all go to Big Sur.'" Priceless. Naturally, I now call it The Big Sur Game because of that glorious situation.

Ok, gentle readers, it's your turn. What did/do you do to pass the time while passengering? (Did you pronounce it the right way in your head?) Did you do the whole "find a thing that starts with each letter" thing? Did you have a version of The Runner? If so, with or without pole? Comment away. If it's a longer story, you can always email ptklein@gmail.com. Take care, have a great Tuesday, and I'll see you back here tomorrow.