I flashed down the F3 at Mooney Mooney pulling maybe 700 revs for 120km/h just letting the throttle trail like a big go-kart at 5:11pm and then ran into the world's biggest traffic jam. As I sat there in the warm afternoon sun I could see all of these lights switch off ahead of me and realised that I'd be there for a long while.So I step out of the car for a bit and had a bit of a short wander. The speed limit sign was obviously laughing at us all as it read 110 and here we were doing 0. Then I sat on the roof a while and just started to notice something.
There was a Subaru Liberty immediately ahead of me and in the back was this little kid asleep with her head cradled by the seat belt and I thought "I wish I could do that"
My usual position in a motor vehicle these days is in the driver's seat and then followed by the passenger's seat. Only very rarely do I actually get to sit in the back anymore as I'm not exactly an overly tall person but I'm tall enough to completely obliterate all rear view in the mirror.
Little kids have the enviable position of not having a care in the world in the back seat apart from boredom. I remember sitting it the back seat of dad's red car and watching the moon race through the clouds, or drifting in and out of sleep in that lucid state and watching lights go past. Why don't I dream anymore?
The second you make that leap into the front seat is when childhood is left behind. Suddenly all of the signs become instructions and distance markers rather than analogous coloured shapes. Logic and reason and worse, responsibility take over. As soon as you make that leap into the front seat, it's never ever the same again.
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