Dancing with tractors

Halfway through my commute home a couple of days ago, I realized that I had no idea how I’d gotten there. Not in the philosophical “How did I get here?” sense, but more in the “Has the car been driving itself for the past fifteen minutes?” sense. The same phenomenon happens most mornings in the shower, when I’m staring groggily at the shampoo bottle, trying my best to remember whether or not I washed my hair ten seconds ago.

The car seemed to be doing a fine job getting us home all by itself, with nary a phone pole collided into, but I had no recollection of turning onto the main road, stopping at stoplights, switching into the left lane or pulling behind the guy with the “Your proctologist called -- he found your head” bumper sticker.

You have to appreciate a good bumper sticker. The serious ones can be so persuasive, can’t they? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve changed political affiliations and religious beliefs based on the bumpers stickers I’ve driven behind on the way home from work. Really, if you have a strong opinion, it’s your responsibility to sum it up in seven words or less and stick it on the back of your car. The people who have their minds changed by driving behind you for two minutes, those are the people you want on your side.

I realized that I’d been driving on autopilot when my designated lifetime passenger/wife Kara shook me out of my stupor by yelling, “Ooh, there’s Blockbuster! Let’s stop and see if they have that Antonio Banderas dancing movie!” Though I’m pretty sure Kara has dragged me to every dancing movie that has ever been made, somehow we missed “Take the Lead” in the theater, a breach for which Kara has only recently begun to forgive me.

I was in such a zombie-like state from my day at work, though, that I could only reply, “URRRRGH! NEED BRAINS!” as we sailed past the video store.

Kara hates driving, so her specialty from the shotgun position is announcing her desire to stop at a store once we’re less than three feet from its entrance doing sixty miles per hour, leaving us entering most places of business after half a blink of the turn signal, on two wheels and with pedestrians diving into the bushes. Lucky for me, Antonio Banderas would remain unwatched in our household that night, as the thought of watching him twirl around our TV screen provided me insufficient motivation to pull any death-defying maneuvers to get into the parking lot.

But I’m sure he won’t go unwatched for long. Kara loves dancing movies as much as I loved tractors when I was a little kid. At three years old, life held no greater thrill than driving by the tractor dealership that was a few miles down the road, which had tractors of all different sizes and colors parked out front.

“Twactor! Twactor!” I would shout, pointing to make sure nobody missed out on getting a glimpse of the magnificent machinery. As we passed, I’d twist around in my seat to get one last fleeting look. Those moments were so precious, just like the two seconds of NFL cheerleaders dancing and jiggling about before the cut to commercials.

The look I gave those tractors is the same look Kara gives to movie theaters and video stores that have dancing movies in them. “Dancing movie! Dancing movie!” she’ll shout, pointing as we pass. She’s like a moth to light with those things, especially if that light is a projector beam that is transporting the visuals for a poorly plotted movie in which whole crowds of attractive people spontaneously dance choreographed routines in unison.

You can tell Mike Todd that nobody puts Baby in the corner online at mikectodd@gmail.com.