For seven months, I have been stumped, not by a puzzle or a game, but by a shuttle.

When I board my shuttle in the mornings, it is already nearly full. I figured there must be another stop somewhere, but there is only one listed on the schedule. One morning I worked up the nerve to ask a fellow passenger where this might be. Her answer was snottily unintelligible, so I didn’t ask for clarification.

I am no stranger to the world of secret clubs. Why, I have been excluded from some of the very best of them. So I got the hint: the first shuttle stop is a secret, and one I have to figure out for myself so I can crash it and make the secretive people really unhappy.

It’s not that I want to ruin anyone’s good time. Except that I do. I really, really do. I am, in fact, kind of a jerk when it comes to secret clubs. It’s not about entitlement, but rather about figuring out the puzzle of it. I can be annoyingly persistent when there is a puzzle involved.

However, I have an even stronger trait that often trumps my puzzle-solving desire: I am easily distracted. So easily distracted, in fact, that for seven months I kept meaning to figure out where this stupid secret stop was, but something would always distract me in the morning, like:

  • I need to mail this letter, so I should find a mailbox.
  • I am cold so I will just stand here where the wind doesn't blow so hard.
  • I am thinking about a story I am writing.
  • I am thinking about homework.
  • I am reading (while walking, ill-advised but I do it anyway).
  • I am knitting (while walking, even more ill-advised, but I do it anyway).
  • What would happen if I was a sleeper agent and was suddenly activated?
  • What will I eat for lunch?
  • What would a suddenly-activated sleeper agent eat for lunch?

Last week, I was so tired that my exhaustion overrode any distractions. Instead of turning one way to walk to my usual stop, I turned the other way. Before long, I was standing in a group of people who looked like they were waiting for something. I was too tired to do anything but stand there too. I vowed that if nothing happened before 8:15, I would hail a cab. Before I had to deal with that impossibility, my shuttle showed up. I sat in an empty row, sleepily victorious.

HIDWtS Rating: That feeling of awesomeness wrapped in disbelief of my own ignorance. Kind of like a bacon-wrapped scallop, but replace the bacon with Tofurky.

[box type=“shadow”]I ride a shuttle to work. It is a really nice shuttle and the first time I have ever had this luxury, causing me to overthink pretty much every aspect of it, especially where to sit. And now I overthink where I decide to sit in every open-seating situation, so I’m writing about it in a series called How I Decide Where to Sit.[/box]