Panic Stations!

Increasingly I find that I am worrying unnecessarily.  The low level anxiety that I have always had when confronted with new situations has intensified somewhat and, more than occasionally, causes a glitch in my thinking.  Something I seem to struggle with is OMG!!  Where will I park?  What if I can't find or fit into a car park??  It is unnecessary and weird and what I really hate is that sometimes I think that maybe I won't go to wherever it is that I'm going.

Hypocritical creature that I am!  For years I have been niggling at my mother because she refuses to drive in the city.  She never has because she says she doesn't know where she is going.  So read the signs, look at a map, I say in that tone I hear more and more from my own children.  That sort of pitying, are you for real tone.  My ranting has never made enough impact on her to change her stance.  Now I fear I am experiencing this same lack of confidence (albeit about parking not driving).

Driving can lend itself to introspection and often problems have been mentally resolved by the end of a journey. I drive a lot on my own and I feel really comfortable doing so.  It is sometimes quite relaxing with the music playing and the dog for company.  She likes all the songs that I do! Possibly this state of mental disengagement/auto pilot contributed to the most recent episode where my brain sort of faded.

What happened was this.  I decided to refuel at one of those automated/self serve fuel stations you find in small country towns.  It pains me to reveal that it was not the first time i had done this.  Yet like a goldfish I seem unable to retain the memory of anything that has gone before.  I put my credit card in, selected the amount of fuel I needed, put the card back in my wallet and then completely forgot that I had done this.  I stared at the machine with a rising panic thinking it had swallowed my card.

Just then another vehicle pulled up and a couple got out.  They saw me standing, gaping at the machine, sporadically pressing the HELP button (not really helpful at all).

He said, "Have you got your fuel?"

I said,"No I haven't and I don't know what to do!"  I pressed HELP again.  Nothing doing.  She came over, seemed nice and she pressed HELP in case she had some sort of special connection to the machine that I lacked.  Then she sort of peered intently into the slot trying to will it out.

He said, "Well Babe, I don't think you had better put your card in there if it's swallowed hers".  Good advice.  My hero!

I said, "Well I'll get my fuel anyway at least," and proceeded to do so.  Then it occurred to me that I had better check in my wallet which I did extremely surreptitiously because I had begun to have a sneaking suspicion that I had indeed got my card back.  Upon seeing it nestled safely in its slot I turned to these good Samaritans and tried to look woebegone.

I said,"Well, good luck!" I drove off hoping never to see them again because I was too embarrassed to let them know how vague I am.

Recently I saw this apology on Buzzfeed with the heading 33 Pictures That Will Make You Proud To Be A Human Again.

Deep in shame I realised that my picture will never be among this collection because my moral fibre is too frayed around the edges.  Those people probably ran out of fuel on some lonely stretch of highway and I am really sorry about that.

  Maybe if he hadn't called her Babe??

No, probably not even then.  

Road Rage

I have clocked up many miles driving back and forth to the city (4 and a half hours away) where our daughters attended high school.  Even before that when they were at the local primary school it seemed I was forever on the road going to pick them up, or off to a meeting, or taking them to weekend sport.  When my older daughter had to describe the occupations of her parents she said, "Dad is a farmer and Mum is a Driver!"

Of course in the hours I have spent behind the wheel I have muttered a few obscenities at the occasional deluded motorist who performs an erratic/ill judged/dangerous manoeuvre in front of me.  I have even tooted twice!  Once in a crowded car park so that the driver wouldn't reverse into me (I was in their blind spot) and once when the other driver pulled out onto the highway causing me to brake hard.

I did feel bad about that because when I passed the car the other driver was some one's great grandma I think.  Still, it was a bad mistake which could have caused an accident.  In general I think I am a reasonably capable driver but I am in no way a perfect driver.  I have had my fair share of dings and scrapes.  I have reversed into a pole, a retaining wall and the car of a visitor to my home.  I have learned that you can achieve a great result to a dented bumper with a hair dryer and a can of touch up paint.  I too have been beeped!  For this reason I have mastered the art of the apologetic wave.  I use this when I have misjudged or got in the wrong lane or performed a minor driving faux pas.  On a couple of occasions I have done something so heinous that an apologetic wave wouldn't have sufficed and I would not have been surprised if the police had been informed and fronted me afterwards.  Luckily no damage was caused, except the deep shame I always feel when driving though Cuballing. I think they have altered that intersection because of me.  I shall say no more.

I do try to be a considerate driver.  I let people in if the traffic is heavy I try to be patient if they haven't noticed the light change.  In short I try to drive by The Golden Rule! I think it's important to acknowledge that you are just as likely  to make an honest mistake as much as other drivers and to rein in the tendency to be intolerant and discourteous.  By honest mistake, I don't mean driving through a stop sign I hasten to add.

Yesterday my daughter had to attend an appointment at a major hospital.  Being unfamiliar with the car park she mistakenly drove into the entry to a boom gated car park for staff only.  Realising her error and needing to reverse out, she got out of her vehicle to politely ask the woman behind her if she would reverse out so she could do the same.  My daughter could not have been more apologetic or polite but this woman was unnecessarily belligerent and ungracious.  She grudgingly backed out a little bit, but not fully, which caused my poor girl to have to drive over the curb thereby scraping the undercarriage of her car.   She was left upset and flustered by this encounter and by this woman's rudeness.

Obviously this woman may have a nice side/many problems/a prickle in her bum but I think she is in all likelihood just a bag of snot!  Hoping what they say about Karma is true.