Lizzie Conklin

Car rides with my dad feel like their own separate eternities. 

My dad is a physicist. His thoughts of choice include:

1) Quantum

2) Nano

3) Lab

He does not believe in noise of any kind when he operates a vehicle. My dad believes in physics. And thinking about physics requires silence.

And so, in our many father-daughter car rides, brows slightly furrowed and hands drooping just below 10 and two, my dad would stare directly into the road ahead with calm intensity — the kind of intensity where you could tell that his thoughts had importance but not urgency. Although we both sat in the same vehicle, in all other respects, we inhabited two planes of existence which sometimes converged but often didn’t. When they did converge, I was always responsible:

“Can you turn on the radio?”

“Why?”

“Never mind.”

And we would enter back into our own silent worlds.

Although, I think his world was significantly more sophisticated than mine. Sometimes, if I stared long enough, I would catch my dad, with one hand firmly pressed on the wheel, sketching equations into the air with his other hand. I would often try to decode what he was writing on his air-blackboard. When I was younger, I’d try to see if I could spot any numbers. As I grew older, I’d look out for variables, or plot points on a graph.

I never got anywhere.

Conversely, in my world, I would restlessly bounce my legs as I explored the subtleties of the new episode of “Keeping Up with The Kardashians.” In my world, I would internally sing: “99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer!” While my dad thought about quantum and nano and lab, I would push the limits of how far I could lean my seat back before he would say: “Chloe. Sit up please.”

So, when I started to drive, I vowed that I would practice the anti-scientist method of transportation. My car is boisterous and lively. As I drive nervously under the speed limit, there is a constant stream of chatter. There is gossip. There is Taylor Swift. Even driving alone, I talk to myself.

My car is somewhat like my life at Yale. I am consumed by my classes, and life outside of class is just an extension of the seminar table.  I discuss books and music and people and places. And I do it constantly. I’m surprised I haven’t lost my voice yet.

 When you talk to humanities people, they tell you that they’re brilliant with their big words and sweeping hand gestures. “In some senses, yes,” they say. “In others, no,” they retort. They mention dualities and juxtapositions, and they all have glasses with striking frames. Scientists don’t need all of that. In my mind, all scientists are like my dad. Brilliant, but in a self-contained kind of way. Endearingly odd. They all wear the same five shirts and have unkempt hair and they live in a distant world that does not seem to resemble any world that I know.

 College does not take kindly to the scientist’s ethos. Part of what it means to be a first year is to try and make your new friends understand your own world. Part of what it means to be a humanities major is to show people that this world has insight. But in making this world constantly available, it loses its singularity. And it’s kind of exhausting. 

In some sense — see what I did there — maybe I have lost my voice. I have lost the voice that no one else gets to hear, the one that is single-handedly capable of running through every single banality that there is to know. At college, this voice is a luxury — and an important one. I will never conjure equations into the air, and I will surely never let my hair get that spiky, but maybe, I’ll try being quiet for a little while.