All right; we're here, just sitting in the car.

I love the word catawampus. It's terrific that Blogger has no idea what to do with it, but even Dictionary is quick to note that the word is "chiefly Midland and Southern U.S." in origin and usage. Which means the fact that I keep forgetting to introduce into my classrooms, which are predominantly haunted by Yankees, is sort of a missed chance. Kind of like a road less traveled by.

(My favorite idiosyncratic miscommunication in class is my saying, "Okay, put that work up," and the kids interpreting that not as "away" but as "into the air." Oh, Northerners. Just you wait till the South rises again.)

On my way home -- speaking of school and roads -- the sky opened up a nice can of near-death on me. The snow/slush/ice mixture (which was truly expert in its concoction, I have to say) caused traffic mostly to crawl along at twenty miles an hour. Toward home, in the neighboring bit of local highway, the line of cars was screaming along at about five miles an hour.

And that's the speed of near-death!

See, I panic in snow. Or ice. Or rain. Any precipitation makes me kind of freak out. As I passed the grocery store around here, I was crawling at perhaps five miles an hour, and I was also perhaps five car lengths behind the car in front of me. Which, as it turns out, is just enough space to avoid death (or score near-death, as it were).

I tried to brake -- I think that's what I'm supposed to do at a red light -- and my car did not agree with that decision. I pumped the brake, slowly lowered the brake, screamed, cried, closed my eyes... and the car just didn't stop. So I went onto the sidewalk, literally caused a pedestrian to move out of my way (he didn't jump -- I was moving too slowly), ran a red light, and continued on, catawampus as anything (see, there it is!) through the busy intersection.

If I hadn't gone to a happy place in my panic, and if I had been going a bit faster, it might have been awesome. Instead, it was not awesome.

And that's why my wife is being picked up at the train station by a cab and not her loving husband. What a prince she married! What a rose garden she's been given!

More importantly:



I definitely watched all of this. All the way through.