I’m a lousy driver. With this statement, I’m also an anomaly. Eight of ten American men rank themselves better than average behind the wheel. If I volunteer myself as below average, I must really suck.
Thirty years later…
Yesterday I got a late start on my drive to work. I strained my back… again… over the weekend while cleaning out my truck. I hadn’t even gotten to the vacuuming yet. I bent over to peer under the passenger seat and collect the random garbage scraps that accumulate there to start a new life—fast-food wrappers, soda cup lids, and receipts from my latest car repairs—and my back went crunch, crunch, crunch. I don’t think I actually heard the noise, but it happened slowly, the feeling so deliberate, I knew exactly what it sounded like beneath my skin.
My father-in-law summed things up perfectly later that evening when he came over for dinner, “For someone who spends so much time exercising, you sure injure your back a lot.” I’ve been moving slowly ever since.
Susan and Eli headed out to work yesterday at the usual time, around seven-thirty, and I putzed around for another half hour—not really doing anything, and not really doing nothing. When I finally left for work, the bus stop in front of my house was in full commotion.
When my children were young, they were the only kids in our neighborhood. The houses, built in the sixties and seventies, once harbored scads of kids. I know adults who grew up in my neighborhood. They tell stories of gangs roaming the streets with eggs and toilet paper looking for misdemeanors to commit. By the time we moved in, those kids of yore, my age or older, had families of their own. Their elderly parents spent their days sitting on their porches or waking around my block. They were all proverbial cheek pinchers. They gushed over Sophie and Eli as if they were an endangered species. Which, in my neighborhood, they were.
Now those seniors have all moved away or moved on. My neighborhood filled with young families over the past seven years. Every house has two or three grade-school kids. And they all descend on the corner in front of my house every morning at eight o’clock to meet the bus.
Back to my deficient driving skills. My problem stems from a lack of flexibility. Ever since a bicycle accident in 1995, my head doesn’t pivot fully on my neck. As I age, arthritic calcification makes the problem worse. In general, it’s hard for me to figure out what’s going on behind my pickup. Yes, I have a backup camera, but that only shows what’s directly behind me, not what’s coming from the sides. Once, after checking my camera, my mirrors, and up and down the road, I swung my car out of the driveway and put it in drive to head off on my journey. Dr. Dickey, the elderly veterinarian from around the corner stood directly in front of me straddling his bicycle in the middle of the street. He wore a look of pissed off incredulity. No matter how many times I check the road, it’s never enough.
As I attempted to head out to work yesterday, I put my pickup in reverse. A girl wandered behind my driveway heading to the bus stop. To avoid alarming the parents scattered about, I put my truck in park and waited. When the area cleared, I put it back in reverse, but more children appeared behind me. And then a father. And then two boys. And then that same girl as before as she ran back to her house next door to grab some forgotten item. And then back out and across my driveway once again. I contemplated killing the engine and heading back into my house.
When the action finally hit a lull, I went for it. I backed out of my driveway slowly, my windows down, my head swiveling back and forth scanning for any moving obstacles. Suddenly a man scolded his child to get out of the way. I hit the brakes and torqued my sore back to look completely behind my truck. Dammit! That same girl from before sat in the middle of the road fifteen feet behind my truck.
This morning, as my wife left the house, I still sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee and reading the news. She gave our common pre-work parting salutation “I’ll see you online,” and then added a cautionary question, “What time did you say that bus stop gets busy?”
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Previously Published on jefftcann.com and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
