Aim High in Steering

That, unfortunately, was one of the few tokens of wisdom I took away from Driver's Ed, circa 1991. The goal was to use a catchy little phrase to remind tender 16 year olds to look far in the distance while driving, as opposed to playing Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon with the steering wheel. Assuming it was just an obligatory lesson, I'm sure it was dismissed as such by most of us; it's retention about as permanant as a Garfield press-on tattoo from the State Fair. Yet I can still remember the grainy, late 1960s-produced film, and the fuzzy Times New Roman font bearing the words across the screen, and the voiceover audio of a man who still looks like Walter Cronkite in my head. But for some reason, the very phrase that meant little more to me than yarn at the time, took on a much deeper, more resiliant form today.

As I was careening around a curve I've navigated thousands of times, I felt my anti-lock brakes spring into action and remind me to slow the fuck down. There was a 2-inch-thick layer of ice caking the pavement, and though I knew every dip, every pothole, every chink in the ice floor to scrutinize in order to save my chasis, I diverted my gaze to ground much further away and around the curve, in anticipation of someone else driving just as wrecklessly towards me. "Aim High in Steering" rushed to the front of my memory's stage...and an epiphany fell on my anxious mind: this ridiculous phrase also rang true in life.

Now I'm no radical philosopher, but try to follow me here. When "aiming high" in steering, you're not staring at the road 3 inches in front of your vehicle as you travel. It would greatly hinder your ability to anticipate, or appreciate for that matter, the scenery approaching and/or surrounding. Whether it be a lovely park or perfectly-timed convenience store or a weary driver drifting into the on-coming lane, chances are you'd miss it all completely, and would have nothing but redundant gravel, a full bladder, or bits of glass and teeth to pick up from an area much larger than the initial 3 inches, respectively.

But in aiming high, you not only catch the aforementioned 3 inches in your peripheral vision, but you also gain great perspective on the world around you, both familiar and unexpected. That beautiful pink and orange hued sunset, kissing the horizon with it's cottony lips? Saw it. That group of deer bounding across the center median? Averted. That incredible high moon you followed for miles? Like you could almost touch each and every delicate crater. Sure, you didn't hone in on the dip in the road you knew was coming...you've travelled that path hundreds of times. You rolled over it's mediocrity and ignored it's repetition, and fully appreciated the new landscape sprawling across the vast road in front of you. Go a little further than you had initially...Hey, you may just see a stranger on the side of the road that needs a little help that you could provide, and watch as those Hidden-Dragon drivers are going to blaze right past. And while today you weren't necessarily planning on much personal interaction, there was the oppotunity to help, to meet, to interact, and you took it. That one person in distress, innocently waiting for a kind sole to hap apon them, could be the most important person that ever graced your presence. And you would've missed it had you not been....Aiming High in Steering.

Funny....a menial little phrase from Driver's Ed just catapulted me into preemptive nostalgia! All I know is, taking the same road so many times and knowing all the dips and potholes and ice pockets gets you to the same place....but one flip in the script and you may very well find yourself staring down the barrell of the most amazing experience you would have never seen coming had you focus on the old observatory routine.

Next lesson: The I.P.D.E. Method....stay tuned.