Technology
SHUTTERSTOCK
I ran over a dead skunk, yes dead,
in front of the cheese factory, not
long after getting my driver’s license.
I was laughing with Jill so I didn’t
notice it. After I ran over it, we
laughed even harder. Fortunately,
it didn’t smell up my car. Then there
was the ditch I spun into and took out
a row of corn.
Again, not long after I got my license,
I was driving home from cheerleading
practice when my windows fogged up.
It was one of those muggy latesummer days and I didn’t know that
air conditioning could fog up
windows. Instead of pulling over to
let it clear, I decided to look through
the bottom of the windshield. Doing
so caused me to drift to the right
side of the road. Realizing it,
I over corrected, spun around
across the other lane of traffic
and landed in the cornfield. The
farmer who owned the field
pulled my car out with his
tractor. Only a tiny piece of
plastic from the front bumper
broke off in the ordeal, which my
dad noticed a couple of days
later. If he knew what happened, he
never said anything. Then, for some
reason, I remembered when he gave
me a lecture about my future.
“You’ve been using computers since
kinniegarten,” he said. “You’re going
to be one of the smartest people in
the world because of that. Do
something with it.”
Being an auto mechanic, my Dad
never understood why I wanted to
be a writer. He thought I should be
a lawyer or engineer, or work
with computers.
He always worried about my writing
career. When people asked him what I
did for a living, he said, “She works on
computers.” Technically true, but he
didn’t know that “working on
“You’ve been using computers since kinniegarten,” he
said. “You’re going to be one of the smartest people in
the world because of that. Do something with it.”
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computers” meant something
different than “writing.” The people
at his church would ask about my
work, realizing that my dad was
proud of me for “w