Eskewpades

  DAYDREAMING SENIOR GALLS DRIVERS     Having always despised driving, I finally quit cold turkey after I retired and moved from Omaha to New York City, a town deemed pedestrian-friendly. How could I lose? I’ve always loved walking. Do I miss driving? Sure I do. Like I miss dandruff. Believe me, I served a tortuous sentence behind the wheel. Iʼm quite the deep thinker who’s always been blessed (and cursed) with a twisted subliminal twin I call Subby who romps, rages and rides the rails inside my beautiful mind. Subby simply takes over while I ponder world-saving issues. In my driving days, Subby, not I, piloted the vehicle, allowing me to explore my deepest thoughts. While gliding through the mean streets of Omaha, I would constantly find my pensive little self to be the innocent recipient of pointed remarks, delivered by a number of the townʼs surplus of sourpuss drivers.   Obviously, they resented an authentic thinkerʼs searching the deepest recesses of his redundant mind. Invariably

  THIMKING   Due to a desperate descent into boredom during the pandemic, I’ve been tricked into a reunion with a frenemy––via Skype. She’s my brother Skip’s former college girlfriend, of all people. She’s hunted me down just to hound me. As a legal precaution, let’s call her Verbena. I don’t know why I’m faking her name. She’ll never read this. She hates my writings as much as she hates my brother. So, she can’t be all bad. Thinking is not necessarily her strong suit. She’s always overestimated her own intelligence. During our online communications, she’s resorted to her old habit of mocking my slightest error by tapping her temple with her index finger and saying with a smirk “Thimk!” Verbena and I met when a professor partnered us together in a project during my first semester in college. Finding not the slightest romantic sparkle, we evolved into being competitors rather than partners. Stuck with each other for the semester, we bantered a bit, but we focused on the project. Being m