The assignment: Imitate the style of one of the writers we’ve studied this week. I’ve chosen Junot Diaz who wrote The Sun, the Moon, the Stars in the New Yorker. See instructor comments below.
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PEDAL TO THE METAL
I’m not a bad driver. It’s all the other jerks on the road who need to go back to Driver’s Ed. You know how it is. They floor it, speed by me at the first chance, hot-dogging it on the highways after I’ve been driving 20 minutes with their nose up my ass. Twenty minutes I spend debating slamming the brakes. Show them what happens when they ride that close. But I chicken out, because I’m a good driver. Getting rear-ended on purpose ain’t worth it. They pass, pedal to the metal and I figure they’ll get what’s coming to them. I pray to the holy mother of Jesus that some cop will pop out from behind a billboard sign to nab the bastards. How sweet that would be. I’d laugh my best evil laugh and cruise on by. They’d get written up. They’d be sorry. Maybe they’d learn a lesson. But the cop is never there.
One time, I was driving on this crazy twisted road in the middle of winter. Full of hills and dips. The kind of road guys on motorcycles love to ride in the summer. The Hopper, Fonda and Vin Diesel wannabes on their Harleys and crotch rockets. On a normal day it’s not bad driving, if you’ve got the patience to deal with pokey drivers cause it’s so up and down that there ain’t a safe place to pass for miles. Even when you get grandma and gramps out for their Sunday drive, paying more attention to the scenery and shit than to keeping their ’87 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme on the road. You’ve got to wait.
But of course there’s those jerks who would rather put everyone’s lives in danger, crossing a solid line on the crest of a hill, than have any more of their precious time wasted behind some slow-ass driver. It’s like they turn to their buddies and say, “Hey, you feel like dyin’ today?” And they all have a howl about it, some kind of stupid kid rush, flying over that hill not knowing if they’re about to have their front end smashed in, not caring about the other lives they may ruin, just cause they can’t sit and wait for another five minutes. It always pisses me off, cause I know I’ll catch up to them at the next light. They’d be speeding and passing, and I’d be driving like a good driver should and we’ll all get to the same place at the same time. It’s then I really want to yell out my window, “What’s the fucking point!”
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Instructor’s comments: So on- such a success, this imitation! My favourite lines: hot-dogging it on the highways after I’ve been driving 20 minutes with their nose up my ass; The kind of road guys on motorcycles love to ride in the summer. The Hopper, Fonda and Vin Diesel wannabes on their Harleys and crotch rockets. I also loved the variation of the sentences: long, longer (almost tipping into breathlessness) and then staccato: short. The only thing I didn’t buy is “ain’t”, but I can’t figure out why.
