One Drive Home, Two Illusions

Often times, as I drive home, my mind works overtime processing the events of the day.  The road is familiar and I drift off into a kind of lazy autopilot.  I have sometimes arrived home and pulled into my garage suddenly realizing that I could not recall a single significant detail from the drive.  The entire time is blank to me.  That is a little frightening.

Today was not like that.

Yes, I drifted off and allowed my car to take me home.  For long stretches I have zero memories of the road.  Probably, I drove poorly.  At my cause, there might be a motorcyclist in the ditch.   Maybe a mailbox is laid over.

Then I saw the man.

The man was fishing along Lake Helena as I drove across the Causeway.  Wow, I thought as I drove ever closer, what a weird shirt he is wearing.  Super-tight at the shoulders, but hanging like frilly curtains overtop his belt in spots.  An earthy tone, too. 

Once I reached within a car-length of the man, I realized he was not wearing a shirt at all.  I was looking at flesh.

One word stretched here: Oooooooooh.

I drove on beyond the Causeway and then over the hills into the ranchlands.  My mind wandered again. Dust rolled away from my car and swirled into the alfalfa fields, becoming earthy-toned ghosts of horses galloping aslant. 

Then I saw the tiny flecks of paper tumbling in small groups across the road at a distance in front of me.

That is some weird-assed litter, I thought.  Where would all those little pieces of paper come from?  Not until I drew within a car-length of the flecks did I realize that the flecks were somewhat windblown cabbage butterflies fluttering from one field of alfalfa to the next.  

One thought: I may need to hire a driver.

--Mitchell Hegman