Driving conversations

In college my carless ass always had to get rides home from anybody I could find with a car. This forced me to get real good about having conversations with people while driving so they would enjoy the trip. Otherwise I would be stuck on the greyhound, which is not fun at all. Luckily I still had this skill when I was heading up to worcester for a tribe called quest concert. My co-worker was, like the rest of the people in our school, really tired of each other, and way more exhausted than would be normal for the first month of the school year. After a brief talk about the weather, the fastest route to the highway, and the gas station indian food, he vented for a good minute about the problems facing our young school. I vented as well about the problems with our leadership, and the fact that our principal is most likely in rehab, and that the students enrolled who have been incrementally short changed are probably going to be faced with a very real problem in a few years. The connecticut traffic only fueled the disgust bubbling under the surface of the weird power consolidation in a school whose strength was supposed to be its democratic decision making and autonomy. It was really weird connecting the dots, seeing how the former assistant principal just slid into the principal chair like the pigs in animal farm and realizing that something had to be done. After a brief consideration of leaving the next year, starting a new school, or hijacking the next staff meeting, it was apparent that something needed to be done. Like when you are all drunk at the bar and get a text message or something that lets you know that you need to sober up and go take care of your buddy across town, we had that feeling of responsibility so great you can't take time to complain. Then the conversation, unlike my conversations in college, were really akward. Then we realized that we were going to be late to the concert, sucks.