Jericho: Driving Myself Crazy
I'm a terrible driver. I hate driving. I hate cars. I think they are wasteful, needlessly expensive, dirty, polluting death machines. We have a love affair with these devices; we have built our cities and lives around them. A lot of what is wrong with this country can be tied to the automobile.
I didn't get my driver's license until I was 24. Not out of some hatred of cars, just happened that way. As I've gotten older, the hatred has manifested and grown. Probably one of the largest reasons I left STL was the automobile. I went to work at 15 to help pay for my HIGH SCHOOL education and to buy a car. I was willing to work, but I was bad at saving. My Grandfather found a car for me, my mother felt it was a death trap and wouldn't let me have it – or she felt I wasn't capable of handling it. (Do all the women in my life assume I'm a moron? Maybe everyone assumes I'm incompetent.) Either way, I never did buy a car and since I didn't have a car, I put off getting my license. If you live in STL, you need a car, or else you had better work at home. With the scarcity of jobs, you have to be prepared to drive to a job for up to an hour, even more. Don't expect the public transport system to make up the difference, either. Without a car, I was less likely to get a job. Without a job, I could not be a full fledged adult.
Either way, even after I got the license, I still didn't drive much. When I was a kid, my mom and all my friends had cars and liked to drive. These days, all my friends have cars and are willing to pick me up and drive me around. In all these cases, I get to sit in the passenger seat and either pretend to be a dog with my head out the window or at least try to be entertaining. Final result is that I don't have to drive. I have less time behind the wheel than the average 19 year old.
So, this week Steph has been all over the place; a business trip in California and then vacation in Maine. She is my driver. It sounds demeaning, and I don't intend it to be. But every day she drives us to the park and ride or all the way to work. At night she drives us home. She drives to all of our errands. She drives to all of our recreational events. She frequently drops me off when I'm hanging with other friends and not her. I keep saying that I need to take over some of the driving duties, but somewhere between her control issues and my laziness, we're coming up on a decade where she has been in the passenger seat few enough times I could count it on one hand. There is little doubt, she is my driver.
With her gone all week, I'm without my driver. I have had to cart my ass to and from the park and ride. This weekend I'm hanging out with friends and I will need to traverse quite a bit of highway and suburban Celtic road knotting to get there. You'll notice I said park and ride, there's no way I'm driving all the way Downtown to work on a weekday! I would call in sick first!
While I realize I'm not a great driver, it's not my driving that scares me – it's the rest of you people! Do you people not think? Are ALL of your blinkers broken? When was the last time any of you looked at a speed limit sign? Must all of you crawl up my ass? If I can't see your head lights in my mirror, and you're driving a truck, you're too close! At a stop light is one thing, but that shit on the highway is insane!!
I white knuckle it all the way to the park and ride. If there is an open spot at the lot, I take it. This week, apparently everyone is taking the bus because the park and ride has been full all week. I then have to white knuckle it to a further away park and ride. What the fuck is the point of driving twenty minutes to a park and ride when on a no traffic day I'm fifteen minutes from work? Then, when the day is done, when all I want to do is relax, the horror show repeats itself. You people may not value your lives, none of you may realize you're in a coffin on wheels, but I do value my hide and I know what a car can do to a body, even at fifteen miles per hour!
Well, it's a quarter after five. I can't avoid it any longer. I hate driving!
I didn't get my driver's license until I was 24. Not out of some hatred of cars, just happened that way. As I've gotten older, the hatred has manifested and grown. Probably one of the largest reasons I left STL was the automobile. I went to work at 15 to help pay for my HIGH SCHOOL education and to buy a car. I was willing to work, but I was bad at saving. My Grandfather found a car for me, my mother felt it was a death trap and wouldn't let me have it – or she felt I wasn't capable of handling it. (Do all the women in my life assume I'm a moron? Maybe everyone assumes I'm incompetent.) Either way, I never did buy a car and since I didn't have a car, I put off getting my license. If you live in STL, you need a car, or else you had better work at home. With the scarcity of jobs, you have to be prepared to drive to a job for up to an hour, even more. Don't expect the public transport system to make up the difference, either. Without a car, I was less likely to get a job. Without a job, I could not be a full fledged adult.
Either way, even after I got the license, I still didn't drive much. When I was a kid, my mom and all my friends had cars and liked to drive. These days, all my friends have cars and are willing to pick me up and drive me around. In all these cases, I get to sit in the passenger seat and either pretend to be a dog with my head out the window or at least try to be entertaining. Final result is that I don't have to drive. I have less time behind the wheel than the average 19 year old.
So, this week Steph has been all over the place; a business trip in California and then vacation in Maine. She is my driver. It sounds demeaning, and I don't intend it to be. But every day she drives us to the park and ride or all the way to work. At night she drives us home. She drives to all of our errands. She drives to all of our recreational events. She frequently drops me off when I'm hanging with other friends and not her. I keep saying that I need to take over some of the driving duties, but somewhere between her control issues and my laziness, we're coming up on a decade where she has been in the passenger seat few enough times I could count it on one hand. There is little doubt, she is my driver.
With her gone all week, I'm without my driver. I have had to cart my ass to and from the park and ride. This weekend I'm hanging out with friends and I will need to traverse quite a bit of highway and suburban Celtic road knotting to get there. You'll notice I said park and ride, there's no way I'm driving all the way Downtown to work on a weekday! I would call in sick first!
While I realize I'm not a great driver, it's not my driving that scares me – it's the rest of you people! Do you people not think? Are ALL of your blinkers broken? When was the last time any of you looked at a speed limit sign? Must all of you crawl up my ass? If I can't see your head lights in my mirror, and you're driving a truck, you're too close! At a stop light is one thing, but that shit on the highway is insane!!
I white knuckle it all the way to the park and ride. If there is an open spot at the lot, I take it. This week, apparently everyone is taking the bus because the park and ride has been full all week. I then have to white knuckle it to a further away park and ride. What the fuck is the point of driving twenty minutes to a park and ride when on a no traffic day I'm fifteen minutes from work? Then, when the day is done, when all I want to do is relax, the horror show repeats itself. You people may not value your lives, none of you may realize you're in a coffin on wheels, but I do value my hide and I know what a car can do to a body, even at fifteen miles per hour!
Well, it's a quarter after five. I can't avoid it any longer. I hate driving!
posted by Jericho Brown at 10/19/2006 05:27:00 PM
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