"Whoa...."
"What?"
"That's cool..."
"What?"
"Whoa..."
"What?!"
"There's a rainbow in your light bulb."
She turned around and stared. "Alright, what you smokin'?"
I am probably around ten years old, tall and of those awkward proportions possessed by many fifth graders throughout history. I am sprawled on my back across my parents' bed, my mom has probably been talking to me from across the room, and I am completely distracted by the ceiling light hanging directly over me.
"I'm serious," I say, "I can see all the colors."
Six years later and after countless strange looks from optometrists across the St. Louis area, "what I was smokin'" was officially pronounced "over dilation." Explained simply: my pupils are too big.
Doesn't seem like a big deal, I know. And growing up, I didn't think anything was weird at all. In science class they told us how white light was actually seven colors, and that all made perfect sense. They just never told me that I wasn't supposed to see them. But that day as I sat in the little white office, the spectrum halos around white light bulbs, the long, streaky beams coming from every street light, and the way every Christmas light shone in the cold dark like fifty-pointed, cartoon stars now had a name. And at the time, that's all I ever thought of it.
A long, sharp blast from the car somewhere behind me echos between the falling rain drops. I swerve but correct too far and run halfway up the curb. "Oh God, oh God, OH @#!&%! oh God, oh God ohGodohGodohgodohgod..." My lips run in an incessant babble of two-word prayers interspersed by vulgarities. "Oh God, help me!"
That's all I ever though of it, that is, until I started driving.
At first it was horrible. Daytime I could handle because things were bright enough to keep the road visible even when I had to pass oncoming headlights, but my night became a world of stark contrast -- blinding lights and pitch-black darks and little in between With practice and experience, I learned to cope, to look at the shoulder when cars passed me, and to memorize the size of my lane. But the one thing I could never, ever learn to cope with was night-driving in the rain.
Every wet droplet around me shines like a searchlight in my face. Wet rubber skids on wet asphalt and it takes sheer iron determination to keep myself from worsening this problem infinitely with wet eyes. My world is a swirling glare of yellow streetlights, car horns, and pounding rain. And I know it, I'm not gonna make it home.
Oh God, I'm not gonna make it.
I'm not gonna make it.
Yes I will.
My faulty eyes focus once more on the only steady thing in my terrifying storm as the glowing red taillights of my brother's car flash a little brighter as he slows for me to catch up. And I calm myself again.
I'm okay.
I'm okay.
I can still see his taillights.
I can follow them home.
If you can't see the point I'm making yet, scroll back up to the beginning and read this again.
Have you ever been in a storm? Life itself is a storm sometimes. Life is a storm a lot of times. And life for me right now, is definitely a storm.
And I cry and I scream and I pray and I swear, but through it all I am as blind as my last night drive in the dark. Nothing is sure. Nothing is constant. The lanes curve or narrow suddenly. I'm lost and I can't even see where I am. I can trust nothing, nothing in this storm.
Oh God, I'm not gonna make it!
Nothing except the taillights.
Nothing except the red.
Nothing but the red.
Oh God, nothing but the red.
But the red is enough.
And it will lead me home.
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