Williams Street, Ithaca N.Y. 14850 — Great Neck, N.Y. 11020

A seemingly ordinary car ride home can demonstrate the extraordinary privileges we enjoy in this society, as well as provide some extra fodder for the Thanksgiving table about our nation’s — euphemistically put — ironies (read: hypocrisies). Observe.

1. Start out going EAST on WILLIAMS ST toward HIGHLAND PL.

FINALLY my car (loyal Toyota Matrix named Morpheus) is packed up with a random assortment of people, music and crap. We have filled up Morph’s tank with gas. Therefore, I am pondering what a terrible environmentalist I am, though the Matrix is quite gas-efficient (25 mpg city, 31 mpg highway). I will continue to be bamboozled by my lack of public transportation usage for the entire car ride, but rationalize it with the amount of money I am saving by charging passengers gas money, the fair amount of stuff I have to take home since I won’t be here next semester and the importance of vehicular space.

2. Turn LEFT onto E STATE ST / NY-79. Continue to follow NY-79.

Oh, good ole Route 79. I will finally get to Center Lisle after sitting behind a must-intentionally-be-going-so-slowly-just-to-piss-me-off truck for about 40 minutes and not having the audacity to pass it. In Lisle, I will mourn over my favorite ice cream shop (serving Perry’s Mint-Ting-A-Ling!) being closed for winter.

3. Merge onto I-81 S via the ramp on the LEFT (Crossing into PENNSYLVANIA).

Maybe I’m listening, at this point, to Putumayo’s “Arabic Groove” compilation CD and pretending that after 2 ½ years of Arabic I can actually understand what the singers are singing about, when in reality I can only catch the “habibee”s (“my darling”).

4. Merge onto NY-17 E via the ramp on the LEFT.

At this point I break into a daze. I think about news that I’ve read recently. I’ll probably think about the awesome Anal Sex 101 event from last Friday and how I should give thanks to the Cornell Republicans, six of whom protested it, for publicizing it even more. I think about how somebody should really invent textbooks-on-CD and how that person would be a millionaire. I watch the bullying cars — those ones that get about two feet away from your own vehicle’s rear, even when there are other empty lanes — and think about how cars can be so damn similar to people.

TAPANZEE BRIDGE, TRI-BORO AND HOME:

Some people mull over their lives when around the Thanksgiving table, with an accompanying mug of mulled cider. But I will do most of my thinking and thanking in the car ride home. It is then that I look around and see the fading beauty of upstate New York autumn. It is then that I actually thank Cornell for giving me four hours (or, according to MapQuest, 4 H 27 MIN) of stressful situations to digest, to keep me sane and interested, to make a four hour car ride more of a break from life than a chore.

It’s funny that I feel most free when I’m really enclosed by a 14-by-6 foot space. But maybe that freedom comes from the knowledge that as a white, middle-class female here in America today I probably won’t ever experience what it feels like to be fearful in a car.

Our American identities — and license plates — allow us to pass into practically any land other than here. I could travel from within Israel’s boundaries to Palestinian land simply because I have an American passport, whereas if I were an Israeli or a Palestinian, I could easily be pulled over on the basis of my license plate color.

Yet here in America, on this very turf, people are pulled over every day not on this type of color basis, but rather on a different type — the driver’s skin color. An American can gain access to almost any country he or she desires and still face discrimination within America herself. A detailed explanation about the criminal law/“justice” system seems in place here, but I hope that my reader is fairly acquainted with its perpetuation of racist inequalities. If not, check out any one of the numerous studies that attest to “minority citizens, particularly African Americans, being disproportionately stopped by police relative to their baseline populations” (Warren et al, 2001).

As for me? My greatest stresses this car ride consist of wondering how much I’m hurting the environment, how I wish that the ice cream store was open now and my lack of understanding Arabic! Yes, I am certainly thankful that these are the problems I will ponder this Thanksgiving car ride home. I give thanks for my life and my freedoms, epitomized by the seemingly simplistic act of driving a car to a warm house with two parents waiting. But, America, we’ve got a long way to go.

This Thanksgiving, I’m starting the Thanking process early. I don’t need a Macy’s parade to appreciate the blessing and privilege of one single vehicle and ponder what it means to be homeward-bound here in America today.

That’s it for now, folks.

Till next year, thank you.

Ariela Rutkin-Becker is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be contacted at arbecker@cornellsun.com. Dude, Where’s My Karma?­ appears alternate Tuesdays.