The road not yet traveled

Sang Lee

o7 The impressions of Sang Lee from his first year as a sports

correspondent for the Burbank Leader and Glendale News-Press.f7

Where am I?

Does it matter?

I want to go home.

Carry me.

It's dark.

I'm afraid.

Shhh, listen.

You can hear it.

Yeah, I do.

Don't be scared, I'm here.

Please, but I...

Shhhh, not a word.

Listen.

I shut the car door behind me and begin calculating frantically. I'm

running late, it's 10:30. "Quinton Jones rushed for... five plus seven

plus two... carry the one..." I'm done. Now I gotta call...

My car sits in an empty parking lot in some city I'm not familiar

with. The afterglow of the stadium behind me provides security. He too,

has had a long evening, and soon, he'll sleep. But as for me, I still

have some work to do.

As I drive back it's always the same, singing along to Elvis Costello

while hoping I'm going in the right direction.

But it's hard to know where I'm going if I can't see. And I wish I

knew how to make these window defrosters work quicker so I could stop

having to make these blind lane changes. I guess that's one of those

things that they don't teach in high school.

Yeah, things were easy back then, no worries. And it's only been a

year since then, but I feel like I've changed a lot.

Now, I don't even know if I'd talk to myself back then. Most of my

friends are partying right now, having fun, living the "good life." But I

find myself covering high school football games. I dunno why. I guess I

called it a dream once, but now I realize what I knew all along. I can't

control my dreams.

*

I never knew that I was afraid of the dark until this past year. In

fact, I never realized that I knew so little until this past year, but

I'm glad I know that much. Because that's more than what most people

know.

Some nights there aren't any stars in the sky. One of those nights was

last fall. I got lost while walking back to my car after a football game

at a junior college. It was darker than when I would close my eyes. I

didn't know it could get that dark. I suppose that's why everyone sleeps

at night.

It seemed like I was walking for hours, but it was more like 15

minutes. There were many sounds I heard, but I probably imagined most of

them.

I spotted a generous janitor and I sat beside him on his cart. As we

were heading to my car, I heard a rumbling sound. A motorcycle drove up

beside us on the campus, it was another middle-aged janitor joy riding in

the forgotten hours of the night, indulging in his only pleasure of the