Loose Leaf Notes

Life in the Rural Fast Lane, my blog entry turned radio essay that aired this month on WVTF public radio stirred-up quite a bit of feedback. The emails I got after the piece aired were all friendly enough, even the one from the man who wanted to inform me that “VDOT would be very upset to hear you say that there are no speed limits on the back roads.”

He was referring to this: I’m 6 miles from downtown, but because there’s no traffic (or speed limits on back roads) it only takes me 8 minutes to get there. I can sometimes ride to town without seeing another car but if I do see one, it’s customary to wave, even if you don’t know who it is.

I should have said “there are no POSTED speed limits.” Truth is, between the loose gravel and the narrow winding curves, you couldn’t drive over 55 on the back roads around here if you wanted to.

Only one listener who wrote mentioned the most obvious line in the essay…Because I have no visible neighbors, I can weed my garden shirtless if I want to, or sunbathe on a lounge chair in the nude (one of my top criteria for Paradise). “Isn’t it nice to go out to the garden to pick a tomato and not worry about what you’re wearing (or not wearing),” this fellow rural Virginian asked? (*I actually changed the word “topless” in the original piece to “shirtless,” thinking “topless” sounded too X-rated for public radio consumption.)

My favorite email in the group came from a man who has since become an email pen pal. I knew he was special when he unknowingly kept using words and phrases that I had just posted on my blog or was about to.

While beach camping at Hunting Island State Park, I wrote that I had one of my father’s favorite songs in my head, As Time Goes By. After that, my new friend just happened to use the same phrase in an email to me. On another day, just after typing the word “PRICELESS” for a post, in reference to some driftwood real estate on the Island, the same word jumped out at me as I read another email from my pen pal.

I knew we had something in common when he told me that he jotted poetry on envelopes while driving and that hearing my radio essay made him want to abandon his job and go home and kiss his kids.

After a few emails had gone back and forth and I was enjoying his writing, I realized that the compliment he initially gave me … You've got a gift of perception of the seemingly complex, yet the ability to communicate in an easy and straightforward manner…could be given right back to him.

I think we see ourselves in others, the parts that we want to develop further. I think we’re inspired by people we recognize who are tuned into the same wavelength that we are.

Update: He did it again yesterday morning. I was checking my email before posting “Floyd Wildlife” in which I tell about my experience with the “flock of turkeys” that looked like pterodactyls and invaded my yard. In his second sentence he managed to use the word “flock,” causing me to ask myself, ‘Is my brain being wire tapped?’