In My Head

(You may want to just skip today. Come back tomorrow — video of the girls on ponies. I promise.)

Yesterday I missed my exit coming home from work. At the time I realized this, I was — in my head — in the fetal position avoiding flying, burning shrapnel.

This is how it started. At one point in my commute home, a small, aggressively-driven car was almost cut off/run off the road by a semi with a large silver tank. I was behind the smaller car, in the passing lane.

I started thinking what I would have done if there were an accident immediately in front of me. Where I travel on I-79, there is a pretty generous median, flat and grassy, so I could have dodged into there. I probably would damage my car, obviously, but better than plowing into a flaming wreck, right? I would have to be careful to avoid the occasional guardrails, but it was doable.

And then my brain took me through the accident. The smaller car in front of me getting bumped, brake lights flaring, the squeal of crushed metal, the tanker jack-knifing. By the time the tanker was rolling, I was in the median, watching the large silver bullet coming toward my car. Then I was out, and running for my life. I didn’t grab my purse, my groceries, nothing. Just me, running flat out, and then skidding to the grass on my knees, covering my head to avoid being blown across the other side of 79 by the concussion of the jack-knifed tanker and my car exploding.

And then I looked up, and realized I had gone right past my exit.

This kind of stuff is what goes on in my head all the time. (Also, yesterday at some point on the commute, probably after I got off the next exit and made my meandering way to pick up the girls and get them to the doctor for their ear rechecks, I was confronting Glenn Beck in an elevator. I believe I called him a poopie-head.) Car accidents, run-ins with “celebrities” I don’t like, various and sundry confrontations and disasters.

I don’t know if it’s normal. I don’t know if it’s pathological. It’s what my head does. Most of the time, it doesn’t interfere with my life — this is the first time I’ve ever missed my exit on the commute home. I just know it’s part of my psychological make-up, part of the way I work, of who I am. I don’t fight it too hard.

Next time, though, I’m going to try hard not to miss my exit.

How about you? What is weird — or what do you think is weird — about the way your head works?