Driver's Seat
I'm so fuckin' tired of driving
I’m so fuckin’ tired of being in the driver’s seat. The left side of the seat impinges on my too-wide thigh, leaving me with a dull ache after I’m in it longer than the three minute drive to the grocery store. And the passenger’s seat sits there staring at me, telling me to slow down, often, always judging my passivity in certain situations on the road, always clucking at my aggressive moments, passing someone on the right, maybe, or pulling up close to someone who’s aggrieved me in some slight way. They likely didn’t mean to piss me off, but they might have meant to. It’s never clear what another driver’s intentions are, till they’ve completed their action. Changing lanes? Just because that blinker is on doesn’t meant mean they are. Maybe they forgot. Or they’re afraid to because I’m closing the space that opened for them.
I try to drive responsibly, but I run the occasional red light, if I’m going too fast when the yellow lights up, and I don’t want to disrupt the passenger’s seat’s rest period. I’ve been known to stomp on the gas to clear a tractor trailer, or someone who’s drunk or on their phone. (Study them: those fuckers drive the same, phone users and the alcohol-impaired.)
Am I a perfect driver? No. I get lost enough. My routes aren’t always great. And my decision-making can be questioned. Maybe I try to squeeze into a spot our vehicle won’t fit into. But, isn’t parking a different matter?
I’d share the driving duties with the passenger, but they’re out of it enough to know that while criticizing isn’t beyond their ken, driving is. A third (or less, lately) of the time, my passenger can’t even drive. And don’t raise the specter of the back seat. There’s one or two who could drive, but they seem stuck in a pattern of fear. Maybe because I’ve claimed a lot of their lives that other drivers want to kill them and me and us.
Do I believe people are driving with an intent to kill? Not really. Not most of the time. But, have you ever watched some people drive? Murder in their speed, in their unnecessary and unannounced lane changes to screech to a reasonable speed on the bumpers of the cars in front of them.
I try, once in a while, to do the Dustin Hoffman line, when my driving skills are called into question. But, it seems to beg tragedy and luck, because while there is definitely skill to avoiding accidents for thirty-three years, some of it is blind, dumb, and deaf luck.
Like my passenger’s misfortune, there’s nothing that can really be done. I’ve read things about people blaming the victim for their circumstance, but that’s so stupid. If an affliction will rise, it will rise. Might better prevention have kept me from the driver’s seat? Maybe? But, probably not.
So I continue to drive. To the hospital, and back home. To the store, where I choose, usually just fine, but sometimes poorly. To practices, to pick up my tired soccer boys. To a shop, where my oldest, who’s “looking for the right time” to learn to drive, works, gathering up money to move away from my house, away from my steerage, away from whatever’s going on here at home. But they stay, I think, in no small part because of what’s going on with my primary passenger.
I am hopeful that by the Christmas holiday I can sit in the passenger’s seat again, and have the bucket seat impinge on the other thigh for a little while. But it won’t ache for days the way the driver’s side one does.
In the meantime, I will definitely take out some of frustration by screaming at people who may or may not deserve it while I’m driving.