White Knuckles and Sunny Mondays

I am not a good driver. This in no way means I am a bad driver, a far too encompassing and emotionally-laden term to be entirely apposite. In fact, I am a good driver at times, such as when I am going twenty-five miles an hour in a residential area with which I am well familiar. Particularly if there are stop signs, stop lights, or roundabouts at every intersection, no pedestrians or pets, no noticeable inclines, and provided that the sun is at an angle favorable to seeing forward.

But I am not bad. Per se. I am effusively, comprehensively polite, for example: I never go first at four-way stops, even when it is my right. (Largely because I can never figure out what is supposed to be right or left when it's all a circle, but that's beside the point.) I stop for pedestrians and children always. I likewise brake for dogs, cats, wayward ducks and geese, regardless of coloring, origin, or gender. I don't speed -- and not solely because my car lacks a usable fifth gear. I am circumspect; I check the side and rear mirrors constantly and, even though I can't actually see over the passenger side headrest, I do the right thing and at least attempt to check my blindspot prior to changing lanes. Which admittedly is seldom necessary, as I am sufficiently courteous as to remain in the slow-traffic lane whenever possible.

But all that circumspection, caution, and courtesy which would likely, in another driver, amount to boundless competence on the road, pale when matched against my utter and sheer lack of confidence. Sadly, while it may work for other things such as messy homes, body odor, and excess body weight, in this case 'knowing it is the first step to overcoming it' is a ponderously mistaken assertion. In this case, it is precisely KNOWING IT the makes the hands shake, the vision blur, the chain smoking fail to work, and the very balls of the feet and tip of the nose sweat. It is the foreknowledge that this can't possibly end well each and every time I have to get up to freeway speed or navigate a labyrinthine and wily Downtown Business Sector filled with greedy shoppers and angry, harried drivers. Being overwhelmed is not my problem: the problem is my awareness of being overwhelmed, which is insurmountable and irremediable. I have many pleasant, and even marginally utile, attributes. Urban navigation is not one of them.

There are so many places downtown that are appealing that i have just never gone to, since no one else suggested them when we were out and I can't drive myself downtown. I had a friend staying in one or other big hotel in the center last year, and I drove around in so many circles, and got stuck pointing upwards at what seemed to be 90 degree angles so many times, and stuck at lights even on the flat streets, and missing street signs, that I ended up parking about a half mile away, because I could never see the PARKING HERE signs until I was already passed them, or too close to pull in without getting rear-ended or shot....

By the time I got there, I looked as bad as I did last night at the end, except that the bald spots might even have been bigger, the pupils even more dilated and the skin yet more ashen and the voice still less audible or intelligible and the grammar far, far more tenuous, due to the fact that it was (cue funeral march) Sometime in the Afternoon that all this tragedy occurred, so there was about 8562 per cent more traffic than early in the night/late in the evening on a Monday.