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Wednesday 27 February 2013

51. Driving me 'batty'!

Grumble alert!  I am about to have a SERIOUS gripe about drivers who drive me round the bend (pun intended!), inciting a severe case of  Tourette Syndrome, where the air turns multiple shades of blue, a few scores over.  The other day, I narrowly missed running into another car.  What happened?  The other driver decided to drive down a one-way driveway -- against the flow of traffic.  When our cars nearly collided, there was no apology or any kind of expression of regret on his part.   He simply drove off as if nothing happened.  Knucklehead!  The most annoying thing? It was not the first time, and I know it won’t be the last.  Grrr!

 

I spend more hours than I care to count in the driver’s seat of our car.  The mornings are pretty straightforward as I firstly drive Tia and Faith to their school, returning to the house to pick up Paige and take her to her school before getting on with my day.  The afternoons however, are a different story. Wednesdays and Fridays are particularly horrendous with me leaving the house to start the ‘school pick-up’ at 2.30pm, finally pulling back into the driveway some 4 hours later – on a ‘normal’ day!  No wonder I’m relieved for the weekends.  But I think you see what I mean when I say I’m on the roads A LOT! 

My pet hates when it comes to life in the ‘driver’s seat’ are: 
  •  drivers who never learnt to use their indicators or hazard lights, forcing everyone else (both motorists and pedestrians) to play a hazardous guessing game of predicting when he/she intends to go straight ahead, change lanes or just stop suddenly.
  • the ‘racers’ who quickly accelerate to stop anyone else from joining the lane in front of them – quite often so they can be the first to reach the red lights!
  • the ones who cannot be bothered with one way traffic signs and insist on flouting the directive
  • the ‘straddlers’ who feel the need to take up one-and-a-half lanes when driving or one-and-a-half car spaces when parking
  • drivers who think they are the only ones of the road and therefore can stop at any juncture in the road, irregardless of the resulting mayhem caused (often without hazard lights)
  •  people who don’t say “thank you” when you 'make way' for them
And of course, whenever it rains, the lunacy on the roads amplify a few hundred thousand times over.  Okay, maybe I am exaggerating.  Just a little.

Matt thinks the answer to my woes is for us to employ a driver.  I was like, “Whaaaat?!?  That’s just CRAZY talk!”  Imagine that!  Giving someone else money to drive us around, only for me to inevitably become the ULTIMATE backseat driver!!  No, I think for the sake of everyone’s sanity, including our 'would-be driver', its best we keep the status quo.  Besides, if there was an ‘outsider’ in our car, how else could the girls and I (and sometimes Matt) sing at the top of our lungs, execute silly 'waist-up-only' dance moves or tell horrendously corny jokes?

Anyhow, I know a little less judgment is required in the way I perceive my fellow drivers. I think the very funny but observant American comic George Carlin captured the very essence of my ‘driver’ brain when he once commented:  “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”  That man has me ‘pegged’ in a nutshell!  Sigh.  As so I continue to TRY to metamorphose into a more serene driver.  Om. 

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