I take my dad's advice to an absurd extreme

When I was about 14, my Dad started teaching me how to drive. Well, he started before that, but not in earnest until I was 13 or 14.

When I was 7, he bought my brother and me a motorcycle for Christmas. My dad could ride a motorcycle before he could walk, which made his up-bringing naturally peculiar, and he assumed that we’d take to it like he did. And oh, I so wanted to. I thought that motorcycles and dirtbikes were amazing. I had dirtbike magazines, and would watch motorcycle movies, and would pretend that my bike was a motorcycle, complete with the joker card attached to my bike with a clothes pin to spank the spokes of my bike. But after my first go on the motorcycle, with my dad perched on the seat behind me, and the front tire blotting out the sun as I popped the most outrageous wheelie after revving it up as high as it would go and spastically releasing the clutch, I never wanted to ride that motorcycle again. My dad was disappointed, to be sure. My big brother had more success, and I didn’t ride a motorcycle until 20 years later.

But that’s a whole ‘nother story. Actually, that’s the whole ‘nother story in its entirety. You’re welcome. But let’s get back to my dad teaching me to drive. It was decided, not by my brother or me, that our Dad would teach us to drive. We loved and worshipped our Dad. The thing is, and this is really a very minor thing, sometimes, and only sometimes, he’d get just a wee bit on the . . . loud side of things. If you ever met him, and many of you have, you’d know he’s a great guy. The salt of the earth. Sure, he’s an ass-kicker (seriously, the guy had two broken arms, and still kicked the crap out of a guy. And you thought that the UFC fighters were tough. They ain’t got nothin’ on my old man), but he’s also one of the most generous souls you’d ever meet. It’s funny when he and my mom are out and about in our home-town. It’s always “Hi, Danny. Hi, Mrs. Martin.” He’s a friendly guy, and my mom was one of three math teachers in the High School, so everyone in town had her as a teacher at some point.

But he would, and really, I hesitate to use this phrase, scream like a little girl during his driving instruction (That’s funny. It didn’t hurt near as bad as I thought it would). Admittedly, we were pretty bad drivers, and it’s likely that he’d scream at us just because he was afraid for his own life. We talked to our mom about her possibly taking over our driver’s education, but she only replied that HER father had taught her how to drive, therefore our dad would teach us how to drive. It was a rite of passage. I’m not sure if it was rite of passage for fathers or kids, but it was a rite of passage, dammit. If I wasn’t going to be bar mitzvahed, the least I could do was be taught to drive by my dad.

We’d go way out in the country, out by the marble quarry, for those familiar with Wheatland, and initially, I’d sit on his lap and steer while he worked the pedals. Eventually, he let me take the driver’s seat, and with white knuckles I would grip the steering wheel, yet somehow still manage to weave from one side of the road to the other. My favorite part of the day was when he took over again, and raced like a bat out of hell back to town, our stomachs dropping as we breached each hill. It was hilarious fun. My brother told me that we actually left the ground, a la the Dukes of Hazzard, but I strongly doubted it, though I never let on. My dad was the mack daddy of drivers.

Being the strange kid that I was, I wasn’t worried about my physical safety while driving, or piloting a few thousand tons of machinery. No, I was worried about driving on an academic level. Specifically, I was worried about steering and applying gas. Not how to do these things, mind you. You just turn and stomp. No, I was literally worried that I would not know how far to turn the wheel to go around a corner, and that I wouldn’t know how hard to step on the pedal to make the car go the speed I wanted it to. I assumed that this was a skill that you learned after years of practice, and that each driver literally thought to themselves “okay, I’m making a 90 degree turn. Therefore, I have to turn the steering wheel 270 degrees at just the right moment” (my mom was a math teacher, and it shows). I didn’t understand that as you’re driving, if your turn isn’t sharp enough, you just turn the steering wheel a little more, or if you aren’t going fast enough, you just apply a little more pressure, or less, depending on the speedometers reading. I eventually mastered the pedal to such an extent that I recently had to take a class in order to keep my license. I thought that you were supposed to collect speeding tickets, like baseball cards. The really good ones are the most expensive. I was wrong. What I really learned after 8 hours of “Blood on the Highway” videos was that it would be a great idea to invest in a radar detector.

But despite discovering how to use the gas pedal, I still had a problem with weaving within my lane. I had it firmly in my mind that your car should stay in its lane and NEVER EVER MOVE. If you started out 1 ½ feet from the center line, then by God, you should be 1 ½ feet from the center line when you are a mile down the road. That never happened for me, though. Swerve, swerve, swerve. Back and forth between the centerline and the line on the shoulder, like a little ping-pong ball.

I told my dad about it, and he gave me a piece of advice that’s stuck with me ever since: “You don’t steer a car. You just aim it.”

That’s some damn good advice. Just aim. It’s so wonderfully Zen, so very Taoist. Such a very long way to get to the point.

I’m a thinker. Scratch that. I’m an OVER-thinker. I usually try to steer when I should just aim. When I was an adolescent, I was such an overthinker that I almost became a hermit. I would analyze any social situation to infinitesimally small pieces of minutia. I went on one date in high school. Carolyn Teter, God bless her, asked me to home-coming one year. I was a horrible date. I’m still grateful to Carolyn though, otherwise I would never have gone on any dates. I couldn’t talk to girls without trying to analyze absolutely everything that was said. I’d take a conversation about anything, and dissect it over and over again in my mind, desperately trying to find a clue that the person I was speaking to was secretly in love with me.

My near-monastic life lead to the rumor that I was gay. I wasn’t gay. Not by a long shot. Oh, if many of you knew how I longed to ask you out. . . But still, wasn’t gay, didn’t really care if you thought I was. I was always surprised at how cavalierly some people would approach me and just ask point blank “Hey. You gay?”

Almost every conversation I entered in high-school had the same theme: I would be thinking about what you wanted, what you wanted to hear, what I should say, and most importantly, the best way to extricate myself from the conversation smoothly. I certainly wasn’t aiming, I was trying to steer those conversations for all that they were worth. And when I was trying to steer, I wanted so badly to be liked that nothing came naturally, and everything was more awkward. It wasn’t until my SENIOR year that I actually made any close friends in high school.

Then I went to college. A fresh start. And I learned to aim a little more and analyze a little less. I was still shy, still overthought most things, but I was getting a little better at just aiming. Just letting life happen without trying to steer it. I got my first girl-friend and my first kiss.

The frustration is, though, when you see those lucky few with auto-pilot. Those people who were simply born on the right trajectory, who seem to ooze confidence and charm out of their pores. I hate their freakin’ guts, but it’s only jealousy. (Truth be told, I think that I have a fair amount of confidence and charm, mostly because I’m awesome, yet humble.) Their seemingly effortless path through life makes me question why my own path isn’t easier, and further feeds my neuroses and over-analysis.

But mind you, this “aim” I’m referring to is merely a way of getting through life without being totally blindsided or paralyzed by the self-doubt that typically comes with over-analysis. Furthermore, thinking in and of itself is not evil. Quite the reverse. Academic thinking is a wonderful thing. And the unexamined life is not worth living, after all. However, when I use the term “thinking” or “over-thinking,” I mean an almost obsessive analysis of a situation that will likely hinder your life rather than shed any light on it.

Unfortunately, my aim at times proved to be a little aimless, and it took me quite a few years to finish my Bachelor’s degree (8!). After working full-time for a while, I started school again and let my aim take over. I took up Philosophy. It’s a lot harder than you’d think, and utterly worthless, but I don’t regret it. My aim was getting a little better. Best of all, I married someone who didn’t mind that I was a Philosophy major. Hooray for my aim! (Yes, Sarah, you were a Bullseye.)

I ended up in Law School. Didn’t plan on it. Just where life took me. In fact, the thing that made me first consider going to Law School was an off-hand remark made by my mother-in-law’s friend about how angry it would make my father-in-law (a doctor) if I went to Law School. (Doctors and lawyers have a natural animosity because they are sadistic butchers while we keep the wheels of society running smoothly.) Yes, I started Law School because of a joke someone made at my father-in-law’s expense. Because I’m me, and think that almost everything is funny, I think that that is absolutely, brilliantly hilarious.

Now, here I am. A lawyer. Not wildly successful, but very comfortable (Of my many (read: few) flaws, being too ambitious has never been one of them. Thinking almost everything is funny, however, is a flaw that I proudly possess.). And I was just described by a client as “cool.” I’m in criminal law, not because I ever planned to be, but that’s where I ended up when I stopped trying to steer.

My over-thinking does still rear its ugly head. Not that that’s a bad thing, but I will never be your Jimmy Buffet parrot-head with a devil-may-care attitude. I will try to continue to aim down life, and realize that I’m just going to have to drag along this insufferable, sarcastic, terribly shy (yes, really) very occasionally insanely neurotic, yet testicle-smashingly handsome person along with me.

I will never conquer my overly-analytical moments. To this day, I still have Sarah read emails and my replies before sending them, just so she can tell me “that person wasn’t implying that you were stupid. And you shouldn’t curse in an email to a Judge.” But, like a toddler boy being toilet trained, the older I get, the better my aim. I suspect when I’m around 75, I’ll have this whole life thing down pat.

You don’t steer your life. Hell, you couldn’t if you tried, you damned control-freak. You just aim it, and see what happens. Dad, thanks for the advice. Mom, Dad taught me how to cuss. Whew, am I glad to get THAT off my chest.

Me and my filthy, filthy mouth (Degree of difficulty: no actual swearing)

I love to curse, to cuss, to swear, to use bad language. My mother told me when I was growing up that cursing was lazy, and showed the lack of imagination of the user. How gloriously wrong she was. The foulest language is the most colorful, unique, attention-getting, emotion-inspiring language of the lot. And I use it often, and I daresay well.

There’s a fine distinction between simply cursing and cursing well. I’ve known several people who feel that curse words should be used as commas, or used in place of “ums.” It becomes routine and ineffective. Eventually, it becomes silly, and finally stupid. What a crime, to take brilliantly powerful part of our language and render it toothless by wielding it incorrectly.

My history with the Almighty Swear started very early in life. My sainted father had a keychain made for him by a friend that was a small bronze circle with one word etched in the middle. As far as curse words go, it’s one of the most versatile, and applicable to practically everything, despite its humble beginnings as a noun. It is the slang term for feces. Just that one word. It was, much to my parents’ dismay, the first word I learned to spell. I recall returning home from kindergarten one day with a paper that my teacher had sent home with me. In my five-year-old opinion, it was art. I had drawn a stick figure man sitting at a table, and a stick figure woman standing nearby. The man was holding a newspaper, and in a large speech balloon over the man’s head was the word, the only other word besides my own name that I knew how to spell at that point.

Mind you, I don’t recall that tableau with my parents and the newspaper ever actually happening, so I don’t know why I chose to immortalize it on the back of a kindergarten worksheet, but there it was. I proudly showed my parents. My parents did not show pride in return. Instead, it was gently explained to me that the word was inappropriate for children. I was taught that phrase that has haunted children for generations : “Do as I say, not as I do.”

You see, my sainted father would, from time to time, and on appropriate occasions, swear. My mother didn’t swear in front of me until long after I graduated from high school (Just between you and me, it still tickles me to hear her swear. It’s a rare occurrence, and almost always a quote, but she’s such a sweet old lady that hearing foulness coming from her mouth leaves me slightly and quietly hysterical.) My sainted father is a wonderful cusser, definitely one of the best. He knows not to bandy swear words about just to swear, but rather to punctuate a point. And everything I learned about the craft of swearing I learned at his knee, or rather from the passenger seat. I not only inherited my father’s propensity towards the obscene, but his road rage as well, and we both loudly and happily voice our objections towards other drivers with every vulgarity at our disposal.

I didn’t begin cursing myself until I reached the ripe old age of 7. I remember the day. I was feeding the dog, and I quietly said that word to myself that I had used when in Kindergarten. I felt horrible for the rest of the day. I knew my parents would find out some way, and I would be punished. But nothing happened. I questioned my older brother, Brett, who was an expert at all things (as an older brother ought to be). He just laughed at me (like an older brother ought to do).

Later, Brett would dare me to say certain words when we were waiting in the car for my mother to return from some errand. At this point, I have to admit that I had a certain paranoia regarding my parents. I was convinced that my parents had taken our Thunderbird to the Ford garage to be fitted with listening devices, and that every word I said was being recorded. I was convinced that my brother, who was an expert, was also an agent of evil. Still, when your big brother tells you to swear, you swear, lest you feel the wrath of his scaly hands on your forearm administering a “Native American Rope Burn.”

As time went on, and I wasn’t caught, I became more and more daring with my cursing. I started cursing with friends at school. I was cavalier, but chivalrous. I typically wouldn’t use profane language in front of girls. Okay, maybe chivalrous was the wrong term. Guarded. Girls were more apt to tell on you than boys.

And life proceeded. I learned to use cursing to make others laugh, to emphasize a point, to gross others out. I still never cursed in front of my parents out of respect. Me and my filthy mouth left home and went to college, where I met a wonderful girl. Our second date was giving blood (romantic, eh?). I gave blood first. Before the nurse took her blood, I commented on the enormous gauge of the needle. The nurse told me to shut up. And this delightful girl said, “Man, that hurts like a . . . “ Well, you know the story of Oedipus? Think of the curse word that best describes him. That was the word. And I knew it was love.

Cursing as an adult is an interesting thing. I eventually became comfortable enough to curse in front of my parents, beginning with the master curser, my swearing sensei, my dad. I swore a few times around him and he didn’t say anything. And so it went. Never accept a car ride from my father and me at the same time. We turn the air blue.

With my mother, I was a little more hesitant. I was a man, dagnabbit, and should be able to say what I wanted. Still, I hid my swearing in nonsensical sentences, like “fart it to crap.” But in the end, the real me percolated to the surface. I try as much as possible to refrain from dropping f-bombs around my mother, mainly because my father does so as well. But she knows that despite all her efforts, I’m at heart a lover of language. Of dirty, dirty language.

Even now, as a full-fledged adult with full swearing rights, cursing seems to have its own patterns and etiquette. Generally, if an older male uses profanity in your company, you can feel free to use it in his. If he doesn’t, then typically one doesn’t use profanity in his presence as he may deem it “crude.” In this context, “crude” is apparently a bad thing. If a younger person uses profanity in your presence, then it really depends on the circumstances. If a woman uses profanity in my presence, then she inadvertently opened the flood gates for yours truly.

I love language. I love the sound of it. I love how words string together to make beautiful poetry, or even better, terrible poetry. I love the feel of language on my lips.

But my favorite part of language isn’t the noun or the verb or the adjective. It’s the profanity.

Oh, hell, yes.