Late Night Drives

One of my favorite parts of away games in football was the drive home. I would get off the bus after the game, change into street clothes, and head immediately to Taco Bell. Taco Bell was as close to a postgame tradition as we got in my group of football friends, so we headed there, win or loss. We would laugh and joke, and celebrate or commiserate depending on how the game had gone. Then, when the last burritos were eaten, I would get in my car and start to drive. The sense of freedom sublimely tickled me like the sweat-touched locks of hair on my forehead, and as I drove, I felt that I was leaving the world behind. This is the beauty of late night drives. The exquisite aloneness, that acutely sweet mixture of cold night air and the twinkling firmament above. We (I speak for modern society as a whole here; I hesitate to think whether I am qualified or not) are constantly surrounded by other people in our lives in this particular time. 4.00$/gallon gas nonwithstanding, we are supplied with a veritable multitude of ways to connect with one another. Phone, email, text messaging, even the jackass who blogs about his infinitessimally insignificant opinions at four o' clock in the morning. Yet the converse of this great proliferation is what we lose: the ability or want to be alone. The dichotomy of alone and together has come to define the human experience more than any other, and we are on the path to losing one side of it. I am as guilty as anyone, I am no saint. Yes, it is true that my cellphone is bright and waiting in my pocket for my order to connect with anyone, anywhere. Maybe this mystical sense of detatchment is a fool's illusion. Maybe I am wrong. But like those that stayed behind in Plato's effortlessly esoteric allegory of the cave, that fleeting shadow, that simple relaxing, is real enough for me.