I am totally lethargic. I just woke from a brutal nap, and before that, I spent the day on a brutal interstate coming and going down that long and tedious road dubbed I-75 with one goal in mind: to get my daughter, Scout and her friend, Sylvia, home from their spring break vacation. The ride to Valdosta, where I was meeting them, was boring as hell. I almost fell asleep, once or twice. My arms and my legs felt uncomfortable for most of the ride. I don' t think that road tripping has the lure, at near 50 that it had in my late teens, early 20's. Then I would hop in the car with a six pack of beer, turn up the tunes and cruise. Now it's bottled water and mostly CNN or FOX on Sirius. I brought my dog, Morisson, along for the ride; Morisson loves to road trip.

I don't see how I survived all those youthful drunken driving expeditions. I remember pulling into Orlando, around 1976, after having pulled over somewhere between there and Tallahassee to get a second six pack, to drink while driving, but that's about all I remember was pulling in. Ostensibly, I was there to watch the FSU football team play in some bowl, but, really, anything that was going on, in those days, was just a background to the buzz. Speaking of football, I remember, sort of, throwing a sandwich at a cop who had pulled me over in Gainesville, Florida; what I was doing there I can't now recollect. Again, this incident occurred while I was a student, of sorts, at FSU. To this day, I can't understand why the officer let me drive off. Perhaps it was the end of his shift and he just didn't want to deal with it. I say student, of sorts, because it got to where all I was studying was the bottom of beer cans, beer bottles, bourbon and gin bottles. I went from being an honors program student to stumbling away from the university, one class short of a degree. I flunked this real estate finance class, twice, and said fuck it, I'm out of here. What a tragedy, don't you think, to have invested all that time and money into something and to then get screwed out of it because you were an alcoholic, but didn't know it at the time?

Somebody was looking out for me, in those drunken days of youth,though. I should be pushing up the daisies, baby, but here I am, today, entrusted to get two wonderful young teenage girls safely home. I got to give praise to my Higher Power for that, for sure.