After living in Maryland for my whole life, I moved to Virginia two years ago. I have found out that it’s a decent place to live as long as you live 25 miles from the alpha waves emitting from the sanity beacon behind the Washington Monument—waves that induce people to buy single-digit numbers of shotguns and occasionally vote Democratic.
Yet I still have my Maryland plates and registration, somehow dodging the once-a-month visits the police make to my neighborhood to round up the DMV delinquents. The story of why I haven’t changed my registration is a complicated one mixed with nostalgia, laziness, and frugality. Okay, it’s not complicated at all. I’m a cheap, lazy bastard. And if you think it’s foolish to put off buying something that you’re going to have to purchase eventually, go complain to my teeth.
My time may be up soon though. A few days ago, as I walked home from my car, I saw a police officer give a ticket to a driver for having an expired registration. Hmm. My car was parked right across the street from the forlorn driver. I hopped up the steps to my townhouse, put down my groceries, counted to 30, left, whistled a jaunty tune as I skipped pass the officer and back to my car, and then SCARED THE POOP OUT OF A SQUIRREL AS I RACED BACK TO MARYLAND.
Okay, I didn’t actually go to another state, but I did drive to the library and enter a state of sorts…the state of learning. Okay, I didn’t actually learn anything. I spent an hour reading X-Men graphic novels. But I did learn a valuable lesson from today’s experience: SEE YOU IN AUGUST, COPPER!
Actually, now that I think about it, I hope not to see you in August. But if I do see you in August, I HOPE TO SEE YOU AND NOT BE YOU!
Scratch that. If I were you, I would never get a ticket. Also, I would have a club to beat cockroaches and nails. If you were me, you’d sleep in until noon and then arrest a gang of Cheerios. “Into the hole, perpetrators!”
So I hope to see you and be you, because if I am you, I will see you in the mirror when I wake up and mousse my spiky hair.
But if I can’t be you, and I have to see you, I hope our meeting is brief, and your view of me is restricted to my backside entering a car with dented Maryland plates. I will think of you at the library as Wolverine lunges at his opponent from a tree, his arms spread eagle, a bird with metal wings.
