Christmas 2024, where metal is king because the real thing is just too darn expensive (among other peripheral issues) this year. Plus, from what I understand, it took less than an hour to put up and decorate.
This week, I have a topic that strikes fear and stress in the members of my immediate family: automobiles.
Specifically, me and anything to do with automobiles.
First off, let me admit to this one important and highly salient fact: I am a 100% complete Richard as a passenger. I am actually proud of the fact that the moment I got my license at 16 (going on for what will be 44 years of being a menace on the roads), I turned into the mega-Kevin of the passenger universe.
If my ass wasn't planted behind the steering wheel, I became the kind of passenger that you would pull over to the side of a dark desert highway and push out of your car with a pointed metallic object. I have mellowed out in my older age, but I still wear my thorny crown with pride. Except on the rare occasions that I'm a passenger in my daughter's car, then I absolutely behave myself.
Now, onto the main topic of this post: my driving.
I make no excuses for my positively thuggish driving, as I was taught to drive by my dearest mother when I was a lad. Now she just drives bad. Period. End of discussion. Unfortunately her bad habits had also worn off on both of my children as well (she taught them), but that's a story for another time.
The key difference, in my humble opinion, between thuggish and aggressive, is that thuggish driving requires spatial awareness and acceptance that you drive like a jerk, but not jerky enough to draw the attention of Officer Unfriendly. Aggressive driving requires no acceptance of personal responsibility and a high level of narcissism.
I will also admit that my thuggish driving is an equal opportunity destroyer of cars. It really doesn't matter what kind of car that I drive, my driving habit remains the same, thuggish but obeying the basic rules of the road.
Here's a short list of the cars that I have owned/driven over the preceding four decades of life, most of which were driven into the ground/destroyed in an accident. In no particular chronological order, I have owned/driven the following:
Ford Pinto; Grand Torino; Chevy Malibu Wagon; Acclaim; Camaro; Hyundai; Ford Escort; Oldsmobile Alero; Nissan Altima; Toyota Celica (manual); Monarch; Ford Ranger.
Pretty sure that I've owned way more than 12, but you get the basic idea.
In general, I do cause a lot of anxiety and stress with anyone who happens to be a passenger in any car that I drive. To be honest, I have to be one of the only people that I know that absolutely tolerates backseat drivers whenever I drive. I had people who straight up tell me that they will not ride with me due to the way I assault the road.
And I do not differentiate between highway and residential/town/city driving. Having resided in a suburban area located just outside the capitol for about fifty years and having worked in said capitol area for about twenty-two years, my driving has remain consistently the same: thuggish but obeying the house* rules of the road.
*When you drive in the city, normal rules of the road do not apply, but those that were modified due to certain circumstances do.
Now, lest you think that I drive severely stupid on residential streets, I do not. I am very well known in my local neighborhood, so I actually make sure to drive uber-responsible (e.g. posted speed limit or below, eyes open so wide that my entire head disappears). And if you think that after reading all of this that your opinion of my driving is low, just wait when I decide to tell you of my adventures as a pedestrian. BWHAHAHAHAH!
In general, I scare people with my driving, whether that other person is a fellow raging maniac behind the wheel, or a trapped passenger beside me. I drive badly and where I live in Connecticut, I am not considered to be an anomaly, but a normal member of the automotive society. If this was another time long ago, I probably would be the model for those news stories about bad drivers.
One more aspect of my driving you should know about that puts me a cut above everyone else save my two adult children, is that I still remember the majority of the back roads in my state from my days borrowing/returning newspapers/microfilm to various academic institutions. So not only can I still get from border to border to border without taking the highway, but I still remember what route numbers go N/S & E/W and where I generally is in a given part of this state.
Sadly, knowledge like this is rarely passed on to the younger generation these days. I mean, you should be able to in a pinch read an actual road map to get from point A to point B (last real road trip I had a road atlas with me and we were able to plan everything out down to the very last detail), but just like having to use an actual telephone, it's a very lost art.
So, how are your driving skills these days? Good, bad, average, or just so ugly that you're the proverbial answer to the insult of "you got your license out of a cereal box"? Inquiring minds might want to know, if only to avoid you as much as humanly possible on the roadways.
{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved
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Lay it on me, because unlike others, I can handle it.