By Tobin Barnes
As I write--and I mean exactly that--I am making the great trek across the plains of South Dakota.
Again.
I was back to see relatives east river and am now headed west river. Have made this trip well over a hundred times.
Uh huh, thank you. I appreciate your sympathy.
But though the wounds are indeed grievous, they are all self-inflicted. It’s the price paid for having been born and raised in eastern SoDak and then discovering life somewhere over the rainbow in the hills.
Lo, through the years, the veritable inches, feet, and yards of grassland in between have become painfully etched in my mind. I have become all-too-well acquainted with certain hillocks, the odd tree in the odd dry wash, and even some fence posts. They all know me, and I, alas, know them.
Nevertheless, it’s an uneasy relationship I have with these landmarks. They sadly sense, I think, my haste to be beyond them.
Ah yes, thoughts of the traveler recorded stream of consciousness style via a laptop plugged into a cigarette lighter through an adapter. I am now officially a scribe of the modern age. What a wonder, huh?
Not only am I getting from place to place, but I’m doing it without the mindless, zombie-like stupor of mile after mile of pretty much the same. (Tourism office representatives would strenuously disagree, of course, but the rest of us native South Dakotans readily admit it. Only the most starry-eyed of plains poets could cover the distance in between with any semblance of delight.)
Oh, and before I go any further, I should tell you that I’m NOT driving AND writing, though some workaholics might make that assumption. No, my wife is handling the car. So rest assured, my manic need to communicate has not yet gone quite that far.
However, I’m not putting such a mind-boggling juxtaposition of tasks past others,.
You’ve gotta know there’s quite a few A-types out there who’d like nothing better than to be noodling through their sales figures or list of contacts while flying along at seventy-five miles per hour. Heck, that might even be happening in the next car up the road.
Yeah, look. See that guy. He just swerved. Could very well be. Maybe not on a laptop, though that’s within the realm, but certainly on a cell phone.
It’s called multi-tasking. People pride themselves in it.
They’re fending off wasted time behind the wheel while accomplishing something else. Merely transporting themselves from one place to another has never been enough. More needs to be done.
It started with food. After all, who can’t drive one hand on the wheel, the other on a Big Mac with wad of burger in the mouth? Ketchuppy pickles end up on the lap, but what the hey. We’re making time.
So let’s try makeup. Not me, necessarily, but maybe you. The random pothole while applying lipstick might add an inconvenient sneer to the day, but gees, it’s progress.
Now, let’s give Aunt Marge a call. See what she’s doing. You end up laughing and carrying on so much you hardly hear the people honking.
Maybe text messaging would be better. Look at the road, punch in a letter, look at the road, punch in a letter: “W-H-A-T C-H-A D-O-I-N-G?”
“NOT MUCH. HOW BOUT CHU?”
“N-O-T M-U-C-H”
Next thing you know, you look over at the other car, and some clown in the passenger seat’s typing out his column on a laptop.
What an idiot! Should be watching the road, looking around, getting to know the hillocks and the odd tree.
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