Silence and Noise

I thought helping my sister move out of her dorm room would be a fairly uneventful process. Instead of sitting around doing essentially nothing all day, I decided to be a stand-up daughter and sister and offer to drive down to Williamsburg for the day. This in my mind was self-sacrificing to a certain degree, because riding in the car alone with my father is not exactly stimulating. He loves driving (which isn't a bad quality) but also loves to ride in silence. No music, no talking. It's not an awkward silence at all, but its silence nonetheless. I knew the drive was only about an hour long but an hour of complete silence isn't exactly what I pictured. On top of that, he decided to drive our Suburban, whose AC conveniently wasn't working. So the only noise I heard the whole drive there was the whoosh of wind as we drove down the highway with the windows down. I arrived in Williamsburg looking like a bird had laid a nest on my head from the wind but was just thankful to be able to break the silence.

After packing up all her stuff, my sister got in the car and we headed back home right around rush hour. This car ride was monumentally better because my sister is the opposite of my father and loves to fill the silence with conversation. Everything was running smoothly until out of nowhere we hit stand still traffic about 15 miles from our exit. If the traffic had been moving even a little I think things would have played out differently. Instead, the traffic was completely stuck and people began to get out of their cars to use the bathroom or stretch their legs. This made my father anxious to put it mildly. He immediately began fidgeting and I could see his patience diminishing before my eyes. Panic began to set in as he realized we could potentially be sitting there for a very, very long time. We were stopped right beside an incoming ramp and my father suddenly decided it would be a wise decision to REVERSE up the ramp. As in, our car would be going backwards up a ramp blindly as other cars were coming down. I began to fear for my life, but knew that if we stayed stuck in the traffic my dad would have literally lost it. Instead of weighing out the pros and cons of this choice, my dad just went for it. We went up the curved ramp and thankfully made it out without dying or getting hit. Once we got out onto a different highway, the moved instantly lightened. My dad began talking, making jokes, and was beaming. Quite the difference from the person I drove with in the morning.  We kept up a lively conversation the whole way home, and though dangerous, I was glad that the incident had brought about a change in the car's dynamic.