As I was walking up Washington to take my math placement test I saw this CCAD student in a silver Ford Focus, waiting for the light. He had these practice sticks & was really going at it on his steering wheel. He made me think of
my brother practicing all the damn time, so I took it as a good omen.
The kid in the Focus, his sticks were exotically slender & pale. They reminded me of bones.
On the test I got to use the quadratic formula, which I hadn't used since 1994 but remembered anyway. (At my high school there was this kid everyone called Screech, due to an unfortunate resemblance to Dustin Diamond, & we used to sit in the backs of classrooms talking very furiously & excitedly about imaginary numbers & non-Euclidian geometry, & he had a little mnemonic tune to remember the quadratic formula, which I can't remember now, just the way he couldn't keep from laughing when he sang it. I think it sounded like one of those nonny-nonny pastoral filler songs in Shakespeare. There were rumors about Screech & me, untrue, untrue.)
I came home & on the way home I stared at the girl knitting in the seat across from me.
Now I am just going to wait out this storm & put on the Galaxie 500 because I like things to fit, & Listen, the snow is falling.
