ALL Highways are Hell

Where oh where does time go?

I can’t believe my 16th birthday was that long ago. Poof! Like that.




But even before I had my license, before I had my permit, my mom let me drive us all over. Sometimes as far as New Milford, forty-five minutes from my house.

I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I felt so badass, so grownup, so responsible.

Now I can’t believe that sixteen-years-olds are allowed to drive. They’re babies. I’d sooner let them have a beer than get behind a two-ton vehicle.

Whoever picked 16 as the magical driving age musta been smoking a doobie.

Driving is pretty much the scariest thing in the world.

Well, let me rephrase. If you are no longer a “driver”, then driving is a fright-fest shitshow.

I’m not talking about traversing back roads around my country home. I thoroughly enjoy zooming round those parts. Especially in the jeep (sans top, obvi).

Oh no. I’m talking highways. Mass Pike, Interstate 84, getting lost in downtown Hartford horrifying.

I think most people who have driven with me would agree that I’m a good driver. Sure, there were those two horrible weeks in my driving career - speeding ticket, flat tire, forgetting to put my car in park then watching it crash the gas grill into the garage door, hitting a parked car in my high school parking lot.

But other than that, I have a fairly impeccable record. I'm cautious. To this day, Fred Schopp makes fun of me for the time (eight years ago) that I set my cruise control to 65 mph on the way to Cape Cod. Hey, it was shortly after another speeding ticket.

But there arises un poquito problema when one does not drive often and the occasion - or shall I say necessity - to do so presents itself.

There were three such occasions this summer and they all started with a Cape and ended with a Cod (with a Rhode Island in between).

Now, in no way am I complaining. I am such a lucky girl to have three different houses to visit on the Cape. But driving there is bollocks.

I’m more scared of driving than I am of walking home at 4am in New York City. It’s petrifying! There’s so many things that can go wrong. And it’s almost certain death if there’s an accident.

Maybe that’s why I’m so afraid every time I step into a car - as a driver or a passenger. Maybe that’s what ten more years of life have taught me - how pathetically mortal we are. How, with the typing of a text or the tuning of a radio, our life can be snatched from us.

My last trip to the Cape was especially scary...for many reasons. On the way there it was dark, late, there was traffic, I was tired. Though I could not see my hands, they were, undoubtedly, white from my death-grip on the wheel.

10 and 2 boys and girls, 10 and 2.

Then Tom Tom messed with my head on the way home and got us lost in Hartford - I hate you Tom Tom. You’re such a dummy.

Cars are very, very dangerous things. Convenient, yes. But at what cost? Motor vehicle accidents are one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. - and we’re a country full of traffic lights and stop signs and speed limits and laws.
Unlike, say, Sicily - where I very much feared for my life every time I got near a car (they don’t really have rules).

I’ve always scoffed at New Yorkers and their sans-drivers-license-ness but I’m sure the day will come when I must return to suburbia.

And I ain’t looking forward to it - to having a constant vise grip on the steering wheel, to roads filled with crazy drivers, to the necessity of speeding along on highways.

Oh yes. I assure you, I will be dragging my anxiety-ridden body in reluctant retreat to the burbs. My head will be down and my heart heavy with the knowledge that I will, once again, have to drive.