Something about flashing red and blue lights brings out all
of my anxiety disorders in a flurry: I feel the need to vomit, I believe that I
have cancer, I start to pull out my hair, I find myself ugly, and my neck
begins to twitch. This makes it all the harder to get myself out of a ticket,
especially because police officers have no pity for red, twitching men, who are
pulling out their hair whilst amid a flop sweat. And that is what I am reduced
to: an entire mess.
I have been driving for years (legally, five years and a
week, but illegally, longer that that). And I have always been pretty okay at
it besides when I first started driving and I mistook the brake for the gas and
almost ran my father’s truck through a warehouse wall (first time he cursed at
me) or when my lanyard wrapped my foot to my accelerator and so I wasn’t able
to use the brake (second time my father cursed at me).
Out of my siblings, I would consider myself one of the better
drivers of the bunch, not that my siblings are bad drivers, but I do have
friends that have sworn they have had multiple near death experiences while my
sister was behind the wheel—in the same car ride. My brother, of course, was
also known to be an amateur street racer through high school, where he would
race to and from the local pizza shop for lunch.
Living in Utah really did wonders for my driving, and that
is where I learned how to drive in snow. Nobody taught me really, but I taught
myself, whilst driving down the freeway to pick my roommate up from the
airport. It wasn’t snowy in Provo, so I didn’t expect it to be treacherous in
Salt Lake City, but of course I was wrong.
I started getting nervous around the time that I couldn’t
see anything out of my windows besides a sea of white. Trying to be a cautious
driver, I decided that reducing my speed would be a good decision, so I tapped
on my brakes, which did nothing for my speed, but did make my brakes grind
against the pedal. Determined, I tried again, keeping my foot on the brake with
much gusto, which in the snow makes you fish tail wildly out of control. I was never told what to do in that situation.
I didn’t know you are supposed to turn into the curve. I was oblivious to the
fact that after your car spins out, the engine dies. And I definitely didn’t
know how to cope with the oncoming traffic that I could see coming at me. So
what I did was roll down my window and throw up.
I am still the only sibling to have not hit any animals
whilst driving, although that is not for lack of trying on the animals’ part. They
seem attracted to my wheel wells, as if they are just too depressed with life
and just want to end it under the tire of my dinky, little truck. Most times I
swerve away, refusing to be the Kevorkian to a rabbit, a possum, a cat, a
squirrel.
My first time seeing an owl was when I nearly hit one in the
middle of the road, driving amidst the fog. After seeing a strange tumble weed
in the road, I started to merge over, only to notice that the tumbleweed was
not what it originally resembled, but was actually an owl, which I only missed
by a few feet. What was an owl doing in the middle of the road; wings drooped
at its side, head winding back and forth? Trying to kill itself, that’s what.
Now, I am no saint at driving, and received two speeding
tickets within two weeks of each other when I first moved up to Utah. And while
both speeding tickets, I still believe are unjust, I paid them anyway. I am
also notorious for texting while driving, and the occasional road rage, but I
have never been ticketed in any occasion that actually warranted a ticket. The
first ticket, I was lost in the middle of nowhere after my exit was blocked off
on the freeway. My second ticket occurred when I didn’t slow down quickly
enough from a commercial to a residential zone (I had already made it through a
roundabout and almost a second one before the cop turned on his lights). And my
third occurred whilst hanging up my phone while driving.
I don’t enjoy speaking on the phone. I actually detest it to
be honest. I sound like Snagglepuss, I get nervous, and I was scarred as a
child because I was always mistaken as my mother when I answered the phone. But
because I love my family, I call them almost daily, on my car ride from work.
But I do so with my phone on speaker, tucked into my visor, which I consider to
be hands free. I had a quick conversation with my mother, grabbed my phone to
hang up, tucked my phone into my crotch, and that is when I saw the lights in
my rearview mirror. And that is when I receive the flop sweat of woe.
