A Penny (or any other Spare Change) For Your Thoughts: Memoirs of a Homeless Black Man

On my drive down to Palo Alto yesterday I made somewhat of a bonehead move in my vehicle. It was kind of a close call, especially being all rainy and whatnot, but it got me thinking back to the only time I'd ever REALLY fucked up behind the wheel.

It was a Saturday morning of Junior year, and I had just recently gotten my license. I was driving down to Thurgood Marshall to take the SAT, and who else but ol' Lonny Baxter was following me because he didn't know the way himself. I was driving down some street perpendicular to Geary and was preparing to make a left on Geary when the light turned red JUST as I got there. Needless to say, I was flustered. The light took friggin' forever, and there were absolutely no cars in sight the entire time. I even considered just gunning it through the red, but remembered Ilan behind me and realized I would be a bad role model to do such a nonsensical thing. So the light is about to turn green when a Range Rover comes over the hill towards me. For some reason, I just assumed the because I had been waiting there so goddamn long and he had just gotten there, that I had the right of way and he wasn't allowed to go at that green light. I pulled out into the middle of the street and started my left hand turn and realized the dude was coming straight at me really fast, and one really long BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP and a magnificent swerve from the other driver later, I had pulled over to the side of the road thinking about how much of a douchebag I was. Lonny Baxter was laughing his head off, half in horror that I could be so retarded and half because he was glad I was ok.

Why do I mention this, you ask? Well, I was thinking about how incidents like that can completely alter your future, even if they're unbelievably slight and seem unimportant at the time. Say I had been hit by that car, and had been seriously injured. Obviously that would have a huge impact on the rest of my life. But what if it was just a minor injury? Still, it could have completely changed my future. Maybe I was too injured to run Cross Country, and then didn't have the same season I had. I would never have gotten into Stanford, and I would probably be down at USC making an entirely new group of friends, exploring a very different part of California, and just doing different things in general. Also, then I would still be a chunky ol' fella like I was pre-XC. That in turn could have affected the amount of poonani I would have gotten (which is laughable already, I might add), and maybe even had self-esteem effects or some shit. Ok, that's a bit extreme. But it's just so weird how things that seem like they don't matter can put you on a different track in so many different ways. Not necessarily a worse track by any means, but just different.

One last example: say I decide to walk down to Starbucks. I decide to go down Spruce Street right towards it, and have an uneventful walk down there and back. But what if I had gone down Locust and ran into, say, Greg Schram's mom. Say I have an awkward-ass conversation with her, and then she goes home and tells Greg I'm around who proceeds to call me to hang out (which happens from time to time). Maybe then that evening I play video games with Greg instead of doing any number of other things, like go to a concert where I'd potentially run into a new rapper I like, or see a movie that ends up being the topic of conversation with a fine lady and eventually leads to more conversation which gets me into her pants? Or perhaps I have such a good time with Greg Schram that night that I get hooked on World of Warcraft (which I'm sure if I played it often I would, I admit I love that kind of shit) and proceed to make friends with all the gamers at UHS and hang out with them instead of y'all. Isn't it crazy how all that shit could potentially start with making a tiny little decision like which route to take to go to Starbucks?

Anyway, that's the stuff that was stewing in ol' HomelessNigg's head today. Future memoirs will certainly be more comedic in nature. F'sho.

Out like Bolton from the FA Cup.