Zen Driving

Not really Buddhist, but it will help you get into the right mind frame....

My surprise today was that the person who almost hit me was not old. In fact, he was a teenager. Foppy Bieber hair edged his eyebrows as his eyes watched the other column of drivers; the column I was not in. In fact, he turned his tanned face briefly to face our Saturn and I breathed a sigh of relief. He was on his cell. I was nervous that I would have to label this youth some kind of automotive freak-someone who gets into accidents without the usual parameters here in Florida.

Are those cones? Or targets?

Perhaps it is my want-and-need to make this place work out, but I really, truly love it here. That means excusing faults inherent to the place and choosing the positives over the negatives. It also means picking my battles. And some are so large, they are hard to miss. My adaptation to my new homeland does have several snafus that if I do not recognize, people might caulk me up to some kind of selective insanity. So I have to mention one of the largest annoyances since I’ve established this beachhead.

Where ever you see gray or yellow are where the bad drivers are, stastiscally speaking, located....

Drivers suck in Florida.

I admit this freely as one of them. No, not as a Floridian driver, but as a sucky driver in general. I’m afraid to say anything, but though I’ve never really had an accident, my husband’s first comments in a negative sense when we started dating were, “you are kinda slow in the left lane;” and, “do you plan on getting there before the movie starts?” I could not drive quickly. I even once said to an officer who pulled me over for speeding, “really? Me? Can I back up and try again? I doubt that was me.”

I was never an aggressive driver. My stepdad was notorious for creating in me a sense of alarm when I was behind the wheel. He led me to believe that every driver on the road today had a vendetta, and they weren’t afraid to call you on it. Years of driving made me think that he was lying.

Wait, that isn't a steering wheel either...

Now that I’ve moved here, I realized he might have been correct.

I trusted him and his words because, in the years since 1982 when I became his stepson, I never once got the chance to drive any of his cars. I’m forty now. I kept my distance. My stepfather communicated to my low self-esteem that I could not be trusted.

But I also learned what a bad driver was.

Since arriving in Florida, I’ve found that driving here is a Zen existence. A true way of training yourself to living in the here-and-now. Zennists aren’t going to daydream about the potential the day might bring forth; they tend to look at what is happening in the moment and react accordingly. It’s surprising that this state is a red state, in the end. Had they looked at their driving on the 1-4 when the tourists arrive from Peoria, Illinois on a Friday night, they might have a different angle. They’d not see red or blue. They’d see a way to connect to their Buddha-self.

My first week here, I had four near misses. Each time the driver was in a larger car (three of them were minivans with fish—sidenote: In Colorado, since I saw this image frequently, I figured the fish meant they had too many children “a school” if you will and that’s why they drove so poorly!) and every time—on the phone.

Not just on the phone, mind you, but not even holding onto the steering wheel. I do not recall seeing them even touching the steering wheel. Now I get it. I live in a massively rural area and every person is a decent car ride away. People really make good use of their phones here. But to have so many near misses in a row with the same reason, I cannot afford to think about anything but the road and getting home in one piece.

How Zen is that?

The one thing is, my job depends on keeping my car intact! Zen or no Zen, this is serious crap. Now I remember in the movie “Cocoon” how they take away the driver’s license of WIlford Brimley (frankly I would anyway-the dude gives me the creeps and I don’t want him near me even if there was a windshield between us); I recall Morgan Freeman’s purpose was to have the voice of God in the front seat when Jessica Tandy got too old to drive as well in “Driving Miss Daisy.” So they’ve even made movies about this older individuals and their driving skills.

These drivers are the voting force of Florida. The AARP is their cudgel and they swing it at laws that would keep us all a bit safer. But it is too much to hope for. Instead, I have learned that the ‘hand wave’ here in Florida means just as much as a turning signal-even if the encouraging hand waves you out infront of them-and they then speed up and almost rear-end you!

This monkey business is the down side of my up-life here in my new found home. I cannot believe how happy I am for all these bad drivers. I mean, really. Now I get to connect to my inner self while taking that forty five minute commute to the south part of town. Amazing.

And thank you, phone youth. I was scared I might have found an new kind of killer-driver. The teenager. But you were smart. You were talking on your phone while driving. Whew. At least it was in Florida!