I want to prepare you: who knows, we might meet yet down the line. See, I have a rather embarrassing affliction. Given the right peculiar circumstance, I can laugh myself to fine paralysis. A look, some absurd visual alignment, Mother’s latest adventure in Consciousness—and my diaphragm will begin to lock. I can’t call spent air back. The carotid arteries refuse their blood freight. I’m blinded by red, wild calligraphy. There is pain as if my rib cage were held open with a surgical retractor. And, in self-protection, I go for prone fast. This will continue about three minutes. Hysteria might be the diagnosis, though, of course, I’d prefer another. Certainly it is perplexing and even offensive to see a 41-year-old man lie spastic with good cheer on 97th Street or at your demure salon. It doesn’t happen that often—perhaps twice per month—and, until this autumn, it had never seized the Driver Me.
Seven a.m., September 8. The Red-Headed Person and I are due in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, for a football scrimmage between Columbia and Allegheny Colleges. Christopher, 12, has just been made Columbia ball boy, a job that he takes almost as seriously as I take my job as Columbia fan. Elegant morning: grass outside is greener than Prell. When we pull away the R-H P will remind me of a decision made between us driving back from football camp last Sunday. This fall, with ten long roadtrip weekends ahead, we should use the seat-belt harness. I’m agreeable, but he has to show me how. Not in twenty years of driving have I clicked one on. Bondage isn’t my hole card, I guess.
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