I hear that highway whisper and sigh...

"Are you ready to fly?"

I'm leaving the country in just 34 days. Leaving Boston, my parents, my brothers, my family, my friends, my world. I'm going to miss ski season, my father's birthday, the boys' birthday, Michael's birthday, Grandpa Clogston's 80th birthday, Easter, the entire season of spring, and perhaps, most tragically, Saint Patrick's Day/Evacuation Day.

I've never not been home for Saint Patrick's Day. And it seems a bit insensitive to be all, "Woohoo! Today's the day Boston got rid of the English bastards and declared its freedom from King George!" Especially in Scotland. (They haven't had their evacuation day, yet.)

I'm also not going to be home for Inauguration Day.

And yet, I cannot wait.

I'm tired of standing still and letting my life happen, you see. I may be twenty-one, but I can still angst it like a fourteen year old girl in red corduroy pants and a bedazzled tee shirt. And while Amherst is a pretty little bubble in October, and a snow-covered dreamy little bubble in February, it's still a bubble. And a small one, at that. Wasn't it Todd Snider who sang "I've always thought there was something wrong with hanging around the same town too long"?

Listen, I'm not trying to say I hate Amherst or think Hampshire is a bad place to spend four years, because I don't and it's not. But if not now -- when? And yeah, I'm going to miss Mom's scalloped ham and potatoes, her broccoli and cheddar soup, and the way Boston drops 'R's like George Bush drops bombs, but I'd miss so much more if I didn't go.

Let's go back in time. Tenth grade. Mr. Davidson's class. AP European History. November 7th, yeah? As good a day as any.

Ben Jablonski stands in the hall of that beloved portable , leaning against the doorframe, clutching a gift bag in his sweaty senior palms. He must have known it was pure gold in that bag. It contained a book and a bag of Robitussin Cherry Cough Drops (my favorite). The book? How the Scots Invented the Modern World and Everything in It. (Purchase.) The joke being that I was obsessed with Scotland. In the David book, I underlined every instance of Bonny Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, that I stumbled upon. It was how Davidson knew I would do the reading.

Let's go back in time further, please and thank you. Let's say eighth grade, yeah? Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone is being released in a month, so it must be sometime in October. I look it up on this great website I've discovered, something called www.imdb.com? And what do I see? Oh, oh, oh, oh! One Mister Oliver Wood. Ladies, say it with me, now. "Big sigh." (Does no one else remember the audible audience gasp when Minerva fetched that keeper of our hearts from Defense Against the Dark Arts class? The way every fourteen year old heart melted on the spot? Because I remember it like it was yesterday.) Well. Sean Biggerstaff, my Oliver Wood, (stop laughing, Mom... Yeah, that's really his name. No, he really did play Oliver Wood. Yeah, Mom, I get it. It's funny. Okay.)

Anyway, Sean Biggerstaff. Le sigh. He was divine. He was everything an eighth grade girl could want. He was athletic (in the movie), he had an accent, he played guitar, he was older, and he had a self-deprecating sense of humor. Also, I imagined he could probably introduce me to Joann, that fairy godmother of my generation. He was cool! That he didn't really do anything for a long time after Harry Potter, aside from stage plays that I couldn't get my butt to, and pretend to be a badger, didn't phase me at all. I still carried a... Well, Sara can tell you. And Courtney remembers all too clearly what it's like to be obsessed with Scotland.

I mean, was it any coincidence that our dorms at summer camp were named Scot and Wood? Methinks not.

So between Sean "Stop laughing, it's only sort of funny" Biggerstaff, my ninth grade discovery of Trainspotting (and, consequently, Ewan McGregor without the funny Jedi knight haircut or the werewolf beard), and tenth grade's insistence that what we should really be talking about it Bonny Charlie, why waste our time on the Hapsburgs or Otto von Bismarc?

I've been ready to go to Scotland for a very long time.

In answer to your question, highway:

I'm ready to fly.