Carpooling With Chicks

After my past 3 posts, I need to reassure my readers that I don't need a prescription for Lexipro (just yet).
Okay, this is kind of funny in and of itself: I am becoming certified to teach Pilates. The fact that nobody can find my abs is not going to stop me. I suppose it is my love of the circus, contortionism, and authoritarianism which inspired this decision. The training began in April and will be completed in July. Thus far, it reminds me of most of the classes I've taken which are unaffiliated with a university or non-profit organization. Once they have your money, they do nothing more that market their products to their students...as if we haven't already paid $995 for the classes! Foolishly, I am under the impression when registering that I am actually going to learn what I've set out to learn. I should know better. That "beginner's mind" screws me again...
The endless promotion and marketing of $45 spiral bound books, DVDs, equipment, and more advanced classes takes up a good 30% of the class. The other students, riddled with panic and fear of being tested on the scant amount of material, will buy just about anything, making this a multi-million dollar industry. Call it group-mind, call it Pavlovian response - these people go off like traders on Wall Street every time a new product is mentioned. Today's fervor drove a fellow Pilates student to draft by hand a spreadsheet with everyone's order which she hurriedly delivered to our instructor. He was already on his celly dictating the order to one of the employees in the stockroom at their Costa Mesa HQ. One girl who is a personal trainer was reciting her Visa number to the instructor which I took as a cue to go use the rest room for a while.
I can tell you one name that was not on that spreadsheet. I was the one trying to shut down the shopping spree and suggesting that we get back to the program of learning how to teach Pilates. It goes without saying that I'm not too popular with this crowd.

Because I hate to drive in L.A. and still have to read each line of directions from Google maps when I go anywhere, I decided at the first session back in April to find a carpool buddy. Her name is Connie, and she lives about 8 minutes from me. Nice of me to consider our warming globe, right? This chick couldn't be more twasted and more hazardous to the drivers of L.A. I decided after yesterday's commute in her 1970s Volvo that I would no longer put myself in harm's way like that. It was my third time in the passenger's seat with Connie. Although she's lived in L.A. her whole life, she is still completely unfamiliar with the freeway system. Fine - as a chick, I understand that problem. BUT, if that's the case, you need to stay focused: NO MULTI-TASKING! Don't demonstrate Pilates poses while leaving the steering wheel to spin on its own. And how about leaving the windows up while speeding along at 80 MPH and conversing at the top of your lungs about your ex-fiancee. My blood pressure was climbing fast. I kept trying to use my hands to guide her eyes back to those dashed lines on the asphalt. I refused to make eye-contact, in order to dissuade her from this practice.

On Sunday morning I called her and made up a bogus excuse about how I was running late (due to the baby, of course!) and how I didn't want to make her late. She sounded a little put-off and told me that this was not news that she had anticipated or something equally non-compelling. Look, I did what I had to do. As luck would have it, I was not running late. I never am. When I arrived at the studio, the only other car in the lot was Connie's Volvo. Immediately, I left the lot and parked a block away. I wasted about 15 minutes, making an unnecessary call to Augie so that I could walk into the class appearing to have barely made it in on time. Oh, the tangled web we weave. After class, I'm driving away and see Connie making her way to her car. I thought I had a bit of a running start and could avoid any more possible discomfort about my weaseling out of carpooling with her. Somehow, it must have had something to do with the timing of the stoplights, twasted traffic patterns, or just my dumb luck - but we were driving cockpit-to-cockpit almost the entire way! I would slow down, speed up, stay in the right-most exiting lane - it didn't matter. It was like I had a side car, and neither of us wanted to make eye contact. If I'm not mistaken, I think she was even holding her cellphone up to her ear, just to make herself look more legitimately oblivious. My only pathetic retort was to scratch the side of my face a lot. It was such a chick moment. You guy readers probably don't understand these shenanigans
At some point, maybe I'll grow some girly balls and learn how to tell someone that I'm not going to carpool with them without all of the excuses and uncontrollable urge not to look like a bitch. Something to work up to along with the flat abs.