I am in seventh grade, and I am riding the school bus down Route 60 in Powhatan County, Virginia. This road, aka the James A. Anderson Highway, is a long, straight, four-lane highway. We are trundling along, and I am huddled inside my enormous coat, with my skinny legs tucked as far under me as they will go, hoping not to attract the attention of the requisite group of loud jerks. It’s not that the jerks will be mean; they routinely fail to notice me. What would be utterly mortifying would be to be perceived as wanting them to notice me.

But I digress.

As we zoom along in the outside lane, we catch up to a stoop-shouldered old farmer, trundling along on his tractor in the inside lane, also known as the passing lane. His “slow moving vehicle” sign is well and truly indicated.

“Look at that fool!” shout the jerks. “He’s riding in the passing lane! Doesn’t he know that the passing lane is for passing? What an idiot!” They continue in this vein, loving the sound of their own scorn, until the farmer is long out of sight in the rear window.

As this little drama played out, I wished for the nerve to set them straight. I pictured myself, in rich detail, explaining the situation to them. The farmer had observed the ordinary traffic patterns of the four-lane road, seen the usual usage of each lane, and gone one better. Being in the passing lane kept him out of the way of the regular traffic, and he was moving slowly enough that it would be easy for a car wanting to pass to get by him before moving over. In my fantasy, the jerks became quiet, hanging their heads just a little bit, as they absorbed my wisdom. This episode of wishful thinking may seem far-fetched when one considers that I cringed at the idea of these kids so much as glancing in my direction. However, once you realize that I have on occasion envisioned myself using just the sound of my voice to evoke shame in the hearts of those people who would execute a child to settle a score with the parent, this scenario seems almost possible.