License to Drive
"Fucker," I mutter under my breath at the tan, dented Cadillac crossover immediately in front of me. It's traveling ten miles under the speed limit, and I'm impatiently tooling along behind it, but that's not the source of my ire. There has been a hideous traffic violation.
Seven seconds earlier, the same nefarious boat of a car and I had been idling at a red light, side by side, in the left-hand turn lanes, me in the outermost one. The green, protected-turn arrow blinked on, and we veered off, southbound. In the process, the Cadillac casually drifted into my lane as if it had every right to do so, and I was forced to apply my breaks and let it in.
"Hey!" I gesticulated with indignation. I tried to honk the horn but missed the center of the steering wheel in this vehicle I wasn't accustomed to driving yet. And so I settled for a few choice expletives that only I could hear while I glared at the back of the car that had just cut me off. I no longer flip people off or yell out the window; somewhere in there, I got old enough to realize I was neither immortal nor always right.
As soon as I had room, I swerved into the left lane and zoomed around the Cadillac but not so fast I didn't have time to turn my head and get a good look at the offender. She was around 80 years old with hair dyed the dark brown of her youth and giant sunglasses covering the top half of her face. I turned forward to keep my eyes on the road ahead again, was quiet for a second and then burst out laughing.
She was me. Or rather, I will be her in thirty or so years. I have never been the best driver, and at 45, I can already feel my night vision failing. It stands to reason that I will eventually progress from occasionally cutting someone off, realizing it and gesticulating an apology, to obliviously drifting into the lane next door without noticing. Her hair was dyed brown, my hair was dyed purple. I had on giant sunglasses too. And yes, the vehicle I am getting used to driving is, hypocritically, a Cadillac crossover handed down from my late father-in-law.
I put that last part in there so you would know I didn't choose this vehicle; I'm just driving it out of convenience and circumstance. I am not so bourgeois that I would purchase something as pretentious as a Cadillac. But secretly, I love that car. I could've driven my 2013 Toyota minivan with bald front tires and Goldfish crackers permanently ground into the floor mats this morning, but I chose the Caddy because damn, it is comfy. I smile with pleasure when I sit down on its plush seat and close the door to its calm and silent interior. It corners beautifully; it has a great sound system and a big color backup screen which is something my spacially unaware ass sorely needs.
Coincidentally, the dueling Caddies incident happened when I was driving home from getting my license renewed at the DPS office where I'd had to prove I could read the bottom line of an eye chart. Lucky for my left eye, it had to read the same six-letter sequence my right eye had just called out, so it knew that what looked like a blurry "O" was actually a "C." I'm going to be Muriel (that's what I named my future Cadillac-driving doppelganger) before I know it. The way she'd been straining forward to see over the steering wheel...I feel myself in the same pose, every time I'm driving home in the dark.
When I was young, immortal and always right, I was a shitty driver but for different reasons. I could see just fine, but I was an impatient asshole who would sooner slam on the breaks to make a turn and risk getting rear-ended than pass it up, turn around and arrive thirty seconds later than planned. I cut people off on purpose. I almost wrecked my parents' van on the way to a Eurasure concert in Fort Worth, because I was unsure which way to go when the highway divided. As my friends frantically flipped through the Mapsco from page 45 to 102 to find our next turn, it was only when someone shouted, "Left, left, go LEFT!" at the last possible second that I swerved to avoid the concrete barrier in the middle. I didn't want to go the wrong way and be late; missing the opening acts would've been the worst -- far worse than slamming into cement, killing all my friends and bleeding out on the side of the highway.
Fortunately, by some miracle of the traffic gods, I made it through my impulsive teenage years with only a couple of minor fender benders. I got speeding tickets aplenty for doing 90 in my grandmother's Chrysler while flying through the ranchlands between Austin and Dallas, but I never hit anyone going faster than a roll. And now, despite my presbyopic vision, I haven't even dinged anyone's bumper in at least a decade. According to me. A certain person I live with alleges he's gotten his car back from me with new dents, but that's just hearsay. And there was that one time I backed out of our driveway and hit our neighbor's Jeep, but I only hit her tire. There was no damage, so it doesn't count. Plus, I was distracted, bitching at the kids for bickering instead of looking over my shoulder, so it's their fault anyway. This is why I need the Cadillac that beeps when I'm about to hit something. Well, shit. I'm Muriel already.