Chinese Fire Drill

Here's another poem triggered by a mysterious phrase.  (A Chinese fire drill is exactly what is descibed in the poem.  I don't know if it's called by another name or done at all in other parts of the world. Perhaps, in China they call it an American fire drill.)

                                                                Chinese Fire Drill


                                         That’s what we called it when my friends and I
                                         would scramble in and out of a car at a stop
                                         light, all exchanging seats. I suspect there
                                         was something racist about the name, but
                                         but I could never figure out exactly
                                         what. Did it imply the Chinese were as
                                         frantic and irrational as teenage boys?
                                        Or did it mean the car was as crowded
                                        and chaotic as our imagined China?
                                        Or was it a more neutral allusion
                                        to the shuffling of shapes until we got
                                        the tangram right: the best driver
                                        behind the wheel, the most skilled map reader
                                        riding shotgun, smart asses in the back-
                                        although we were all smart asses back then.

                                        Once when there were more friends than seats, I rode
                                        in the trunk, ( I stand in embarrassed awe
                                        of my reckless youthful self.) We were on our way
                                        to lunch at a bar that didn’t card its customers
                                        during the day. I rode the jolting darkness,
                                        like a victim killed or kidnapped by the mob,
                                        unable to take part in any fire drills.
                                        When we finally arrived, I knocked and knocked
                                        on the trunk door until someone remembered me.
                                        I unfolded myself into daylight,
                                        feeling as cramped and creaky as the old
                                        man I am now becoming, squinted at the sun
                                        and wondered, Exactly how did I get here?


Notes for foreign followers:  1. "Riding shotgun" means to sit in the front passenger's seat, like the armed guard who sat by the stagecoach driver in the American West.
2.  To "card a customer" means to check his driver's license or other identification to make sure he is ol enough to drink.