Like most red blooded Americans, I drove a car long before I was supposed to, on furtive back roads with willing friends who had beaters and nerves of steel. By the time I was actually qualified to apply for a driving license, I was pretty much on top of the driving thing. I might not have been familiar with most of the California vehicle code, which explains why I missed the question on the written test about driving around a curve in the fog, but I had real-world experience which was probably far more useful. I think this is probably the case with most people you ask; farm kids and rural kids especially.

Something about the weather this morning reminds me of the first time I actually drove a car, when I was about 14 and my friend T had a spectacular multicolored Volvo, and we drove around with a car load of people. I should point out, for those of you who are squealing in horror at the thought of a novice driver carting around six people, that we were all teenagers, and not terribly bright, but no one was hurt in the end. And we didn’t go on the highway, for Pete’s sake. We probably didn’t exceed 25 miles per hour at any point. Except for that one point when I hit the accelerator instead of the brake. As I recall, we were also participating in some sort of scavenger hunt, so periodically someone would cry out “brake! brake!” and he or she would jump out to collect an object.

And then, mysteriously, I drove into a ditch.

To this day, I can’t explain the ditch incident. I think it was a foretaste for the Great Honda Incident, which happened a few years later; remind me sometime and I’ll tell you the story. I was simply driving down the road in a straight line and then there was a ditch, and we were in it. It wasn’t a very deep or wet ditch, and it wasn’t terribly difficult to miss. In fact, I would have had to deliberately turn to end up in said ditch, which is kind of a remarkable accomplishment. I think that my brain just experienced a moment of total confusion, and that’s how we ended up there. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the last moment of confusion I’ve experienced while driving, but so far I haven’t injured myself or anyone else, and I don’t even have a car now so there’s really nothing to worry about. I swear. Although maybe I should consider seeing a neurologist at some point to make sure that my brain isn’t broken, because every now and then I make totally irrational decisions like going the wrong way on a one way street or purchasing a flat of canned peaches, and I can’t remember the thought process which led to these choices, only the end result.

We all paused for a moment, and then someone shouted:

“Reverse! Reverse!”

And I turned my head to look at him, panicking in the back seat, and I said:

“Well, yes. Reverse would be the practical direction to choose, since the road is behind us and there’s a giant gorse bush in front of us. But could we test for consensus first?”

The consensus was to back out of the ditch, and we continued on our merry way. I’m not quite sure why I was allowed to keep driving after being so monumentally idiotic, but the rest of our adventure went quite smoothly, so maybe I just needed to get it out of my system. After all, who hasn’t driven into a ditch? And I feel that I should point out that, unlike most of my friends, I have yet to be in a major or even medium accident. I’ve bumped into a few things, causing no damage whatsoever, and that’s it. You don’t see me rolling Volvos, driving off cliffs, and crashing into trees. I like to credit the ditch for this; perhaps once it took first blood, it was satisfied.

A team of public high school students kicked ass at a college level bioengineering competition. It just goes to show you that equipping high schools with state of the art equipment and training isn’t a waste, and it could even yield some beneficial results.

Nada Shabout is trying to track down the missing art of Iraq, and to construct a picture of the art which has already been lost.

Two octogenarians were recently jailed for running a lucrative forgery business.

In Australia, employers admit that they are reluctant to hire overweight and obese employees. Hey, at least they’re honest about their bigotry.

An UN panel agrees that global warming is “unequivocal.” So…what are we going to do about it?

Talks between the WGA and the studios will resume on 26 November.

The child mortality rate in Afghanistan has dropped dramatically since our, er, liberation. Well, that’s one good thing to come out of it, I suppose.

eyeare.nu is another sweet NaBloPoMo site.