Thursday, July 07, 2005

The Old Man driver - and me!

why I am such a good and cautious driver now:
I know that out there is a young man, seventeen to twenty.
He treats his car like its a wild horse,
beating the hood with an imaginary whip to get it to go faster.
He drives way above the speed limit,
having deduced that if the lights are set for people traveling at 33 MPH
on a certain street, that if he were able to travel, say,
66 mph through that same stretch of road,
that he might make the previous light.
Its sort of like time travel, pre 'Back to the Future' days.
Our would be time traveler, though,
does not have a DeLorean or anything approaching it.
He drives a 1963 Chevrolet Nova wagon with a straight six,
and more than a hundred thousand miles on it.
It comes off the line kinda slow, but if 'young man' holds the accelerator all the way down it goes way up the RPM scale before it shifts to second.
This is important, because to average 66 MPH , he will need to go something over 70 at top speed and get there as soon as possible.
His first attempts at making this light were failures.
This caused a lot of strain on the brakes, but he had a strong right leg, 'no problem'.
Why does he drive like this, you ask? He is late getting home from the girlfriend's house where he has probably dozed off or lost track of the time.
This works out well because after 1 am the roads are more or less empty, except for the drunks. This speeding Chevy could hardly be mistaken for an old guy who had two too many. No way the old tippler would have the balls to hold down the accelerator for that long,
or to keep on it when the light goes yellow, and you are way too far away,
to make it through safely.
I drive like an old man, because I am one, and I was 'young man' also.
I don't want to meet myself at an intersection one night when we are both coming home too late.

4 comments:

Joe said...

I came across your blog while "bloglinking," (my term for going from link-to-link-to-link). You are one teriffic writer. Even your train wreck was fun! Keep it going! Ah'll be Bach.

Jenny said...

AWESOME!!!!!!!!

David this was wonderful.

Thanks for the jam-n-jeans-n-yacht. You are a prince of a man.

Joe said...

By the way, what are you doing up so late, and how did you get to me so fast?

Anyway, welcome.

I have read Jayleigh's blog in the past and am now linked to it.

I reviewed WOTW.

Anonymous said...

frightfully that was one of the most brilliant elucidations I have ever heard on that issue. Well done.