In A Driving Rain...

If you know me at all, you know I love days like today, weather-wise, and I can't wait for the next one. Cloudy, chilly, 44° maybe, rainy all day, and a breeze that seems to cut right through. But armed with my Carhartt chore jacket and a hoody and a ballcap with pulldown earflaps (what Peggy calls "that stupid hat") I am ready to enjoy these little gifts from Mother Nature. It's somewhere deep in my contrarian nature, what makes me relish these days that everyone else scrapes off the hot dog of their lives. 78°, sunny, a balmy breeze, meh! What is this, Albuquerque or something?

But this weather reminds me of fishing, because if you like to fish, just hang around the sidewalk and you'll see plenty of bait worming around following a big rain. If you like to see driving at its worst, just get off the sidewalk and out onto the street and you'll see them. It's long been a pet theory of mine that there exists a secret battalion of poor drivers whose cars are locked away in garages and sheds until a day like this, and then they receive action messages from AAA - Awful Automotive Asses. They zoom onto the Beltway without so much as a look to see if anyone is in "their" lane, they pull out of side streets when you're 15 feet away, and they make lane changes that Dale Earnhardt would consider foolish.

But - and there's always a big one of those - yesterday I saw something that tops 'em all. Just flat-out beats everthang I ever saw. Right over by our neighborhood Wendy's, a young woman pulled up next to me at the stop light. As I glanced over, I thought, how odd, to have a sock sitting on the dashboard! But this wasn't just any sock, no sirree Bob. This sock had a foot in it, and the foot was attached to the ankle of the Phi Beta Kappa candidate, one of whose hands was lightly attached to the steering wheel.

So, you get the picture? Seat leaned back as if she were at Cinema 37 enjoying a matinee of The Jonas Brothers Movie, cell phone up to left ear, left foot tucked up on left corner of dash board, right foot (I presume) working the accelerator and the brake, right arm steering. This is certainly the posture and state of alert awareness we hope to see in those with whom we share the roads.

When the light changed, she roared and skidded off, to destinations unknown. No problem that she wasn't worried about this in the least; I was worried enough for the both of us.