Night Class, Basic Skills - Journal Entry

Three. Slow. Hours. Lugging around the bricks of punctuation, discussing degrees of pause, semi-commas.

Class is finally over, and when walk outside it's pitch and the weather tries to kill us. Freezing rain & snow blurs all our cars just ahead in the parking lot. Street lights are nearly choked dark. I walk beside Lisa, my oldest student. She wants to be an aide of any kind, "a Pharmaceutical asst.".

She explains how her southern husband learned to drive in snow on a night like this. It happened a little like this. She makes him ride in the passenger seat because he's drunk, and has never driven in snow. Already contracting she speeds the car toward St. E's & when labor crushes down, calmly she places his blabbering hands on the wheel, plays the car's pedals with her feet - fighting the urge to stomp the gas pedal when the contraction reaches its peak.

She finishes the story. We're both soaked by now with ice rain, our eyes blinking blinking. She is grinning, remembering. "I'm amazed my boy was ever born, she says, semi-colon, comma, period!"