stories

When I first started commuting to State City every day, people kept saying, "Oh, are you going to listen to audiobooks?" And of course I was not going to listen to audiobooks, because I am a visual person, people, a visual person, and I read books, not listen to them. 

I listened to music, and then when I found that gave me too much time to think about how other people on the road were driving, I switched to NPR, and then there was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad election, and I couldn't listen to NPR anymore because the news made me furious (so many awful things being done to so many people), and I went back to music.

One day, on a drive back from Central Ski Town that devolved into a blizzard up on the mountain, J. put on an audiobook. I was driving, wearing my glasses, and the starbursts I saw through the glasses whenever a car passed driving the other way nearly blinded me through the driving snow. 

But in the background was this story playing through the speakers. I got caught up in the story as I drove, and it let my kinesthetic brain focus on the road while my auditory brain listened to the words.*

The book was so good.

I promptly listened to all the books J. owned on aud!ble, and when I ran out of those, I had him buy some more, and when I ran out of those, I downloaded the library app and started borrowing audiobooks from them. I tried podcasts somewhere in between, but they didn't draw me into a story in the same way.

Turns out stories are exactly what I needed to take my mind off the hour of commuting in the morning and evening. Don't get me wrong, I still have a little bit of brain left over to notice how inefficient it is when everyone drives in the two left lanes and the right lane sits empty, but I don't have the brain space to get so frustrated by it. My stress level has decreased dramatically. I almost don't mind the commute.

I guess it helps that I finally got a car with bluet00th that will start right up with the audiobook when I get in the car. Without bluet00th, this would be impossible. I'd be in my old ways of propping the phone up on the speedometer and trying to turn it up loud enough to be heard over the road noise when I needed to listen to something on my phone. Or headphones, I guess. That's awkward while driving.

(Side note: now that I have a car with a push button start, I am flummoxed by other people's cars. What is this key of which you speak? I reach automatically to push the button and turn the car off, and there is no button. How does this even work? 20 years of muscle memory, gone in just a few months.)

* I took an adult learning class once, and they taught us that if you are, like me, primarily a visual learner, second a kinesthetic learner, and least an auditory learner, you probably need to do something kinesthetic while listening, in order to process the information. 

hypothetically

Text conversation with J. this morning: 

Me: Hypothetical question: you are driving in the middle of three lanes on the highway just south of the city, on that curve before the rest area. The left and middle lanes are full of cars. The right lane is empty. There is a cop behind you, and he lights you up. Do you: a. Come to a halt in the middle lane, b. Cut across the crowded left lane to pull over on the curve without much of a shoulder, so you are still partly in the lane of travel, c. Pull across the empty right lane to the wide shoulder, or d. Both a. and b.?

J: definitely d

because that just shows how cops pulling people over is dangerous

Me: Ding ding ding!!!

That's exactly what the guy did this morning.

J: sigh. awesome. 

...

I was in the left lane. All of the following happened: we all slammed to a halt. We all had to get over to get around the police car, which was still in the lane of travel (because there was a concrete barrier on the other side). And then everyone behind me had to slam to a halt again because the cop waved to the guy that he needed to get over to the right side of the road, which he did by cutting across moving traffic.

I do not understand the instinct that would cause a driver to pull to the left, into traffic/a concrete barrier, instead of to the right, into an empty lane/the wide shoulder, when being pulled over by a police officer.

brains

When I got my new job and told people that I was about to start commuting 2-2.5 hours a day, just about the universal reaction was, "podcasts." (There were occasional exceptions along the lines of, "books on tape," or "that sounds awful." Actually, most of them started with, "that sounds awful," and progressed to "podcasts," or "books on tape.")

The truth is that I don't mind driving. And I never intended to listen to podcasts or books on tape. If I'm going to read a book, I want to see the words. I'm much more a visual person than an auditory person. If I listen to a book on tape, I suspect that I will zone out and miss a large section and have to rewind. (I know, we don't rewind anymore. I'll have to go back, however we say that now.) I might as well just read the book and catch the whole thing.

I listened to music and jammed along in my car for six weeks. 

And then, on impulse, I switched from music to NPR last week.

So basically I'm smarter now than I was a week ago. My brain is being trained in listening, and I know all the things there are to know that are going on in the world. Brains.