The View from Here

Road Trip

(I actually wrote this two years ago after a trip to New York. Since I just returned from a trip to Vermont and nothing has changed, I’ll share it with you today.)

     We’re a nation of lousy drivers. At a time when most Americans are afraid to lick a stamp or set foot in an airport, we think nothing of getting behind the wheel of a 3,000lb. vehicle and driving 80mph down a major highway while eating a burger and talking on a cell phone. I say this with the conviction of someone who has driven for thirty-five years and recently survived a 4,000-mile road trip.

     The deaths of a few thousand people at the hands of terrorists mobilized our nation to war. Yet the annual deaths of 35,000 victims of traffic accidents don’t even faze us. We don’t protest. We don’t call our congressman. We don’t even change our actions. We see a 50-car pileup on the evening news, and get into our car the next morning without giving it a second thought. And we justify our actions with  timeworn clichés, “I’ve been driving ten years without a mishap. Those people were just lousy drivers”. Well,  those lousy drivers are in the lane next to you, and if you don’t drive defensively, you will be in the next 50-car pileup. The National Safety Council says motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for people ages 1 to 33.

      I drive 120 miles a day. I’ve driven in eighteen states and been a passenger in twelve more. I’ve seen every kind of driver you can imagine. For the most part I just drive defensively and pray a lot. However, there are three types of drivers who push me to the limits of sanity. If you see yourself in one of these categories I beg you to get help before you hurt someone.

     The first lousy driver is the one who is enraged by anyone daring to actually drive the speed limit. These are the drivers who intimidate by tailgating, revving their engines, and even honking. Then they pass wildly around you while making obscene gestures.  Last year  I was passed in the mountains, on a curve, by a car going at least 90mph. And of course there wasn’t a highway patrolman in sight for the next hundred miles. Speeding drivers think nothing of racing through construction areas, small towns, school zones, or bad weather.  Some drivers add an extra thrill by passing on the right shoulder. 

      The second lousy driver is the driver who is preoccupied by everything BUT his driving. He is talking on the phone, eating, listening to music, reading, taking notes, or all of the above at the same time. I recently drove across a major bridge and realized with horror that  the man driving the oncoming car had a book in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. I’ve also witnessed people putting on makeup, shaving, and even brushing their teeth. (Don’t ask me where they spit; I don’t think we want to know.) These are usually the drivers who also expect you to have ESP. They seldom use turn signals because their hands are otherwise occupied. They make last minute turns when they suddenly realize, mid-phone call, that they are about to bypass their destination.

The last driver is the one who is most dangerous. He is the one who is drunk, drugged, or in a rage. He is blinded to what he is doing and where he is going. He doesn’t know or care that someone else is on the road. According to the National Safety Council about 3 in every 10 Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related traffic accident at some time in their lives. Many people I’ve met  seem to feel safe from drunk drivers because they believe drunks drive late at night or in the wee hours of the morning.  That’s a misconception that can get you killed! I once encountered a vehicle going 30mph down the highway at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I thought at first that the driver was having car trouble. Then he began to weave across the road.  I followed behind him for a few miles, long enough to see the whiskey bottle he was guzzling from every few minutes. I escaped at the nearest exit.

And a drugged driver doesn’t have to be some junky. Allergy and cold medications can put someone at risk just as easily as any other drug. Most people don’t even read the warnings listed on medications much less heed them. If your medication has a warning about operating “heavy machinery” remember that includes automobiles.

     Rage can impair people just as severely as alcohol or drugs. Several years ago a car driven by a hysterical woman rear-ended me. Her husband was driving behind her, chasing her down because she was trying to leave him. She was crying and he was screaming and I don’t think either gave a moment’s thought to the fact that they were driving down a public highway.

These are just my three least favorite drivers. I was tempted to write about the drivers who stay in the left lane…no matter what. Or the drivers who hang their feet out the window (no I haven’t figured out how, but I swear I’ve seen them). Or the drivers who turn around to yell and swat at their kids in the back seat. Or the drivers who drive with babies or dogs on their laps. Or the drivers who are so young they can barely reach the pedals. But I’ll save those for another day. Just be warned. We’re a nation of lousy drivers. The thought of air travel may seem terrifying, but it’s the drive to the airport that will kill you.

Signs of Age

     I have one of those “daily reminder” contraptions that holds my medications and hopefully prevents me from taking the wrong pills on the wrong day. I fill it each Sunday afternoon. As I finish and hear the little “snap, snap, snap” of the compartments I’m reminded of my grandmother. She kept her medicine in a cabinet next to the kitchen sink. She took it when she needed it and somehow remembered which one to take. Was her memory sharper, her mind clearer? Or did she just have less stuff to remember or fewer medications to take? I don’t know and I’m not taking any chances. A friend recently took her blood pressure medicine, fell asleep, woke up, forgot she had taken it, and took it again. She had to be rushed to the hospital. I’ll use my reminder.

     My bathroom cupboard is also a reflection of my aging body. It holds an amazing array of lotions, potions, and gels. Most are formulated for some sort of pain relief. My favorite this year is the little heating pad that adheres to your body. My right shoulder wouldn’t have made it through a summer of gardening without that invention!

     I also need lists and notes. I remember my aunt making daily “to do” lists when I was a child. I thought she was very sophisticated and organized. That’s how I’ll think of myself! I’m not forgetful, even though I often return from WalMart without something that is clearly written on my list. No, I’m not forgetful. I’m sophisticated and organized. I write things down. I make lists. I organize my thoughts and ideas. Now, where did I put that paper…

     My children think I clean because I like a tidy house. That’s not it at all. Dirt doesn’t bother me (much), but clutter drives me up a wall. I like an organized house because I hate to search for anything. I remember when my dad would send me into the garage to find a 3/16” something or other. Not only did I usually not have a clue what he was talking about, but  if I did I sure couldn’t have found it in his messy garage. Now that I’m older, misplacing anything is upsetting. Misplacing something significant could give me an ulcer. I spent an hour last weekend looking for an important paper, only to find it neatly filed at the back of my filing cabinet. Right folder, wrong place in the cabinet!

     My calendar is also filled with notations and circles and bright red arrows. Coordinating my school calendar, my husband’s work schedule, church events, doctor’s appointments, civic obligations, shopping, family birthdays, and the usual holidays requires compromise and sometimes a little ingenuity. It also requires that I remember to actually look at the calendar and read all those little notes. Ah, even the best of intentions can still go astray.  I don’t know how my daughters manage to also coordinate their children’s schedules. It makes my brain hurt to think about it.

     Maybe that’s why I don’t sleep as well as I used to. My brain is too busy trying to catch up with the day. My husband will laugh at that statement. He’s been sleeping so poorly, for so many years, that my pathetic complaints about getting up a couple of times a night, or having an ache or pain wake me up, fall on deaf ears. “Ha!” he says, “you’re asleep every time I get up!”

     But if I have concerns about growing old, at least I’m in good company. My father forgets the names of people he has known “for a hundred years”. My friends aren’t sleeping any more than I am. My neighbor forgets where she left her purse. My brother complains of aches and pains. My husband can’t find his glasses when he needs them. At least we can commiserate when our children think we have “lost it”. 

     My husband and I were eating lunch with our son last weekend. He lives in another state and we haven’t seen him in about six months. We were discussing family and friends and my son asked his dad if a cousin was still working at the Movie Gallery.

     “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t seen her.”

     “That’s because you don’t go to the Movie Gallery,” I told him.

     “Yes, I do,” he argued. “I go there all the time!”

     “No, you don’t. We rent at the Movie House.”

     “Oh, yeah. Well, I don’t know then. Maybe she still works there.”

     My son started laughing. He looked at his dad, then at me, and asked “When did you two get so…old?”

     I can’t remember!

My Little Black Book

            I approach each New Year in a frenzy of resolutions, cleaning, and planning. “Out with the old, in with the new” is my mantra from December 1 to 31 as I clean files and drawers and closets. Throwing out old things makes me feel refreshed and ready to face new challenges. But this year I learned a lesson about old things. Some are worth keeping.

            “I need a new address book,” I thought several times as I wrote my Christmas cards. My old book is frayed and bent. There are doodles on the back cover and coffee stains on the edges. There are entries crossed out and notations in the margins. The “S-T” tab is held in place with tape. I imagined a new book with a pristine cover and blank pages ready to be filled with current information in my neatest handwriting.

            I almost wrote “address book” on my shopping list. I meant to do it as I finished the last card. Instead I hesitated and turned to the inscription on the first page of my worn-out little book. “Dear Gary and Mary” it reads, “God bless you richly. We love you. Adult II Sunday School Class.” A wealth of memories came flooding back. I remembered friends and neighbors who helped care for my children after I had surgery. I remembered Buck, who made violins in a shop behind his house. And Hazel, who baked cookies and listened to stories and treated my children like her own grandchildren. If I had closed my address book and packed it away they might have been forgotten in the hustle and bustle of my current life. And my new book wouldn’t have a notation in the margin that Buck died. Or that Hazel moved to a nursing home.

            So I sat for a time and just read my address book, not as a tool for recording names and addresses, but as a diary of my life. There are entries for former employers and schoolmates, friends and neighbors, in-laws and exes. On the inside of one of the divider pages is a Christmas card list of the employees I worked with at a hospital in California. On another page is the address of the truck-driving school where my husband found his second career.  I can follow my friends’ and children’s moves, marriages, and divorces by the crossed out addresses and name changes. The death of a dear friend noted and below it the address of her daughter. There are old friends and new among the listings, some who never write anymore, and those who write often.

            Perhaps it’s because I’m over fifty, but my memories are dear to me. The people who have touched my life remain alive in my mind and still help me when I’m trying to make decisions or cope with difficult situations. That’s why I’ve decided to keep my old address book. It will probably need some more tape in order to make it through another year. I may even have to add a few new pages to accommodate new friends. But I can’t bear to throw out the old ones. As I’m flipping through pages next year, I want to remember Buck and Hazel, and dozens of others who have helped make me the person I am today.

            Shakespeare said it best, “I count myself in nothing else so happy, As in a soul remembering my good friends.”* If you don’t believe it, just read my address book. Or better yet, read your own. 

*from: Richard II

Mustang

I drive a “cool” car. I know this for a fact because the first day that I drove it to school one of my students said, “Hey, Mrs. M! Cool car!” I know this because countless ticket agents, store clerks, station attendants, drive-thru cashiers, and car wash operators have said, “Hey, cool car!”  I enjoy their approval, but to be fair, I must admit that the cool car was my husband’s idea. When the odometer on my 2001 Mustang started edging ever closer to 100,000 miles I envisioned replacing it with a small pickup that would transport me to work AND handle my weekend gardening chores. My husband’s Thunderbird had found a home with our son and I assumed he would now drive the Mustang and thus maintain his “car dreams”. Have I mentioned that I’m married to a car fanatic? Well, only a small portion of my “assumption” was correct. My husband is now driving the 2001. But through a series of discussions and events worthy of another blog, I now drive a dark blue 2005 Mustang. We are a two-Mustang family and my husband is a very happy car fanatic.

Even so, we were dumbfounded by the attention our car elicited during our recent road trip to Vermont. I suppose because the East gets so much snow its residents tend to drive more sensible, practical vehicles. (Our daughter owns an Aztec and a Subaru, but we love her anyway.) We saw lots of vans, SUVs, pickups, and station wagons. We even saw a few other “cool cars”. However, our car was an invariable draw for the curious. When we returned to it after an hour of mall shopping in Buffalo, NY we were amused, but not surprised,  to find a couple peeking in the windows. The same scene was repeated again and again. I once returned to the car to find a young boy looking inside. When he saw me he yelled to his mom in the van next to him, “It’s hers, Mom, it’s hers!”

The truth is it’s mine AND my husband’s AND the bank’s, but I do enjoy driving it. I love the secure feeling of driving a new car. I know any car can have mechanical problems. Any car can be involved in an accident. I hit a deer a couple of years ago, and believe me, deer don’t care what kind of car you are driving! However, after years of driving old, unreliable cars it’s nice to drive a new one. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been stranded by “car problems” of one sort or another. I’m not very mechanical and my usual solution is to be rescued. Of course I do remember my younger, more aggressive days and going to a job interview in my old Pontiac. It had a muffler that was attached to the body by a piece of baling wire and, yes, it fell off when I was about three miles from the interview site. I pulled over, crawled underneath the car, reattached the muffler, dusted myself off and continued on my way. Thank goodness I was wearing a black and white hound’s-tooth print suit that didn’t show a lot of dirt. (Give me a break- it was the sixties!) And many people in our area still remember the old station wagon I drove that had plastic sheeting taped over a broken window. I drove that thing for years!

There are, of course, drawbacks to driving a cool car. I have to watch my speed because my car is going to be pretty obvious if I’m racing down the highway at 85mph. (My son says he doesn’t believe I’ve ever driven that fast.)  I also have to be aware that right now I must have the ONLY dark blue 2005 in our area. Otherwise students wouldn’t say things like “Saw your car at Braum’s, Mrs. M.” or “Were you at WalMart last night?” and be so-o-o right!

Driving a cool car has also made me question some very basic principles. After all, it’s our fascination with cars that drives a lot of the American economy, and the American culture. It’s our love of cars that makes us choose one over the other. Why don’t I drive a “plain white-bread” sedan? Am I trying to make some statement, or just having a little fun? Is the car an expression of me, or am I trying to be a manifestation of it and its image? I like my car. I’ve come to the conclusion that driving it has changed some of my actions and ideas. But in the end it’s just a car. I could honestly trade it in tomorrow for that little pickup, or the white sedan, and still be me. There have been lots of cars in my past. There will undoubtedly be other cars in my future. I don’t ever want what I drive to change who I am. That’s why there is always gardening equipment in the trunk of my cool car. That’s why I haul bags of dirt in it. That’s why I listen to old Dolly Parton songs as I drive to work. That’s why I still drive the speed limit…most of the time. It’s just a car. And even though it’s a cool car, I know I don’t have to be a cool driver.  I can just be me.