I enjoy driving. Actually, I love it. I recently drove across the country with a good friend of mine. She needed a ride to the East Coast, and I was unemployed and looking for adventure. Everything started out well – we had plenty to talk about, and both enjoyed playing car games. We played Ghost, Geography, and 20 questions for a couple of hours, and had some great conversations. However, coming up on hour 6, I was pretty much done talking. I just wanted to sit back, put the car on cruise control, and enjoy the open road. Unfortunately, this is right when my friend decided it was a good time to start telling me about her boyfriend and the problems in their relationship. This is when I started to get worried about the length of time her and I would be spending in the car together. I didn’t want to offend her by telling the truth – that I just wasn’t in the mood to talk anymore. But I also didn’t want to keep pretending that I was interested in her boyfriend’s opinion of her brother-in-law.
I decided to take a chance. As she described watching Harry Potter with her boyfriend, and how she knew he wasn’t that into it but went anyway, I interjected, “Hey, have you seen the latest Harry Potter?”
“No,” she replied, “I heard it’s good though.”
This was my chance! I just so happened to have the DVD with me, and had recently equipped my Toyota with an In-car DVD player. She seemed excited about watching it, so I popped it in and it worked like a charm. She watched the movie contentedly for 2 hours, and then took a nap until we reached the day’s destination. As I contemplated life’s greater questions while taking in the scenery in silence, I was glad I had decided to buy a DVD car player.
