I was stopped at a red light the other day and couldn’t help but notice all the speeding automobiles on the road passing by in front of me. I repeatedly turned my head to the left and to the right, hypnotized as the drivers zoomed by. Some with both hands firmly on the steering wheel, others with one hand casually on the wheel, and quite a few with phones plastered to their ears. They all had places to go and people to see; everyone in a hurry to get their agendas completed for the day. Life is one big "things to do" list. That’s how we want it, as it makes us feel needed, important, and purposeful.

Thanks to technology, our mission is facilitated and expedited. Hallelujah for modern inventions and conveniences. If technology were left up to me, we’d still be sitting in caves!

I admire and envy those super human intellectual types with highly logical minds. I was never mathematically or scientifically inclined. I remember being totally lost in geometry class during high school. One day, I sat in the classroom, thinking, "I must have missed something between yesterday and today." It was as if the teacher jumped from the beginning to the end and I had no idea what happened to the middle. Sort of like when a magician pulls a rabbit out of an empty hat after the tap of a wand; however, in this case, there was no tap of the wand. I missed the trick. My ritual evolved into staring out the window during exams, in this instance, wishing I were on the outside looking in. After handing my teacher a few exams totally blank, I realized I was destined for summer school. And why fight fate? I passed the second time around by the skin of my teeth. To this day, I don’t understand why I had to "prove" a triangle. With the pressing social ills occurring in society at that time, I was busy getting frustrated analyzing shapes. Go figure.

Another subject that gives me agonizing flashbacks is high school chemistry. Forget citations; force the mass majority to retake chemistry class if they’re caught speeding. Believe me, limits would be consciously adhered to out of shear fear. Talk about effective deterrents. I pity the government for attempting to balance the Federal budget; I had enough of my own problems trying to balance a chemical equation. By the way, did you ever notice that examples in textbooks were always the easy, straightforward ones? However, on exams it never failed, we were faced with every exception to the rule possible.

Science lab was a reoccurring nightmare. No matter how careful I tried to be, I always seemed to be washing chemicals off my hands. Halfway through the course, my lab partner was on her own to conduct experiments. She understood that she was better off without me anyway. I was a hazard waiting to happen and definitely better suited as an onlooker, less of a liability.

At least attendance and punctuality were never a problem with me. I didn’t have to worry about arriving at summer school late for geometry…I was already there bright and early each day repeating chemistry. In this case, there was no lesser of two evils; since I survived to tell the story, maybe I somehow gained something from the experience. If so,

I wish I knew what it was.

But I do know that whenever I turn on the computer, start my car, or gaze at a beautiful architectural structure, I thank God for the mathematical and scientific geniuses who made all the luxuries we indulge ourselves with possible, probable, and plausible. Without them, I wonder what I’d be doing now. Probably sitting in a cave. Or, worse yet, back in summer school balancing triangles in the science lab. I’ll take the cave.