October 3, 2004

Here in the wonderfully toilet-shaped state of Arkansas, people tend to have a good deal of time to just sit back and think. Mind you, this isn't because our professors here at Harding aren't trying they're darnedest to render us all notebook-slouching-losers with barely enough time to enjoy several of the major bodily functions. No, we Arkansas-dwellers have plenty of time to sit back and reflect on things because we spend the better part of our day stuck behind some 95-year-old granny who is evidently fine with the prospect of dying before she arrives at her destination, which, judging from the number of times she slams on the brakes in the middle of the road, could be at any given intersection (as far as she remembers), or heck, at no intersection at all.

Not that I am bitter about the prevalence of very slow drivers. I'd like to think of it as a blessing, because I am just that wonderful of a human being. (You should try being more like me sometime.) Without all the time that this situation affords me to mull over issues behind the steering wheel, I might be working on my Massive Heinous Senior Project instead, and that would be unacceptable. Well, I take that back. I would probably not be working on my Massive Heinous Senior Project. I would probably be playing FreeCell while feeling guilty that I wasn't working on my Massive Heinous Senior Project. But, stuck behind Mee-Maw Brakes-a-Lot, my lack of productivity is clearly not my fault. Sure, I could pass her just as soon as we get out of the no-passing zone which has maybe twenty yards to go, so I should be able to pass her in, oh, mid-to-late February.

I understand that there are bad drivers everywhere, but it seems like an abnormally large percentage of them somehow wind up in Searcy, Arkansas, specifically on Race Street, which is sort of like Searcy's own version of Broadway in Manhattan, except that the traffic is worse, and if you want four-star entertainment, you may have to settle for 17-year-old Cody Pratt's exposing his butt cheeks in the Sonic parking lot. But there they all are, all of northeast Arkansas's bad drivers, crammed bumper to bumper on Race Street. You might feel that the name "Race" is ironic given the difficulty of Race Street drivers to even speed past a four-year-old on a Little Tykes tricycle, but rest assured that plenty of racing occurs on Race Street. Yes, even Mee-Maw Brakes-a-Lot will rev up her engine to speeds illegal in Montana for one sole purpose: pulling out in front of Chris Guin. Of course, as soon as she has achieved her goal, she will slow down to speeds considered by most quantum physicists to be "negligible," but where's the fun in that if a hapless college student on his way to Wal-Mart isn't trapped behind her? They will risk life and limb to pull out in front of you, despite the fact that, immediately behind you, there are no vehicles for approximately 700 million miles. But, no, Mee-Maw could not wait a few extra milliseconds for me to pass, seeing as how very urgently her car required repeated brake-slamming. Not that I am bitter! No sir!

Or, if they can't thwart me that way, they'll try to kill me at a four-way stop sign. One stop sign is already too much for the drivers around here to handle. How on earth do they expect them to handle four? The scenario typically works like this:

Mee-Maw pulls up to the four-way stop intersection perhaps three full seconds before you. To make it even easier on her to know who goes first, you even come to a slow, rolling stop to make sure she knows that she was the first to stop. Fifteen seconds or so pass, during which, for all you know, she could be knitting a shotgun warmer in there, totally oblivious to your needs. So, you decide that she must want you to go first, and pull slowly and cautiously into the intersection. Mee-Maw, however, was evidently just staring at the road wondering how on earth one was to use an "intersection," and seeing you pull into it reminded her, so out she comes, suddenly breaking when she remembers that, wait, no, two vehicles can not occupy the same intersection at the same time. So you stop, of course, because you have no idea whether she intends to stop, go, or just keep knitting right there in the middle of the intersection, so you helpfully give her the "you go on" hand motion, but she doesn't appear to notice. So you exaggerate the motion, until you appear to be vigorously spanking an invisible rhinoceros, and she seems to get the idea. She waves back to you. You decide to heck with it, and proceed across the intersection. She starts driving at the same time. You realize that she had perhaps several entire minutes in which she might have driven across the intersection, even at her preferred speed of "negligible," but she, of course, waited until the exact moment you drove, almost as if she wants to crash into you. Eventually, she drives on past, making sure to look at you as she goes by as if you are just the worst little student driver she has ever had the misfortunate to chance upon. That night, you entertain violent fantasies about rocket-propelled grenades.

So perhaps you can feel my frustration, mitigated naturally by my saintly attitude, of course, but there nonetheless. In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where I come from, there are also plenty of terrible drivers. The problem is very seldom, however, that they are going too slow. Everybody in Tuscaloosa seems to be going somewhere in an insane hurry, which is odd, because it's Tuscaloosa. Where are they going exactly? Tuscaloosans will race through a stoplight where the traffic is proceeding in, technically speaking, the opposite direction, all in order to get home and maybe take a nap, maybe watch a little Montel.

I myself am often a miserable driver. Let's face it, I just can't be bothered to pay attention to little minor details such as cement mixers barreling at me when I'm trying to remember the complete lyrics to the Chipmunk's "Christmas Song." It's not that I drive too slow or too fast, I just drive at whatever speed my right foot wishes me to go at. My right foot makes the decisions. I've learned nothing this semester if not how to delegate.*

So let's put our analytical skills to the task of figuring out why Searcy drivers are so slow that entire ecosystems die out while they are en route to Kroger's. There are several possible theories. They might be simply enjoying the scenery. I'll take a quick look out my window to s-- nope. That's not it. Well, that's all the possibilities, clearly. The only remaining explantion is that they all desire to inconvenience me personally. I knew it, and thanks to logic for helping me uncover the truth!

Well, now that that's settled, I'm going to go for a drive. Don't tell Mee-Maw I'm out.

* Official Team Leader Motto: "You do it!"