You're Driving Me Crazy--or Should I Say "Me Crazy Driving . . . you're. . " (If I were Irish and didn't know how to finish that sentence)

I was zoning out today, staring out my passenger side window while I raced down the 10 Freeway in LA. Watching all the buildings pass by made me kind of tired, and I would be lying if I said i didn't close my eyes a couple of times--just for a few seconds. Or minutes--it's really hard to tell how much time passes by when you are asleep, especially while behind the wheel. It was a restless sleep, though, more of a snooze because there was a lot of honking and screaming all around outside my car, for who knows what reason. I tried to ignore it and let my eyelids fall as heavily as my foot was on the accelerator. I finally woke up because I got that weird spinning feeling you sometimes get when you are aspleep while driving a car.

Anyway, when I did wake up, I realized I was driving on the wrong side of the 405 freeway (I have no idea how I got there), with cars swerving out of my way and a trail of fire and explosions behind me. I got off the freeway at the nearest on-ramp, disgusted at the recklessness of the cars coming towards me, waiting till the last second to swerve out of my way. It got me thinking about how many bad drivers there are out there.

Take me, for example. That story I just told isn't true, but what if I told you Im 24 years old and have gotten 75 driving-related tickets so far in my life--more than 3 times my age? You would probably say, "that isn't true either." And you'd be right. It's more like 10. Which is still a lot if you think about it, considering I've only been driving legally since I got my learner's permit at age 15. I'm not trying to imply that I drove illegally before that. I didn't drive at all. I just meant that all of the driving I have done since age 15 has been legal. Unless you count the 10 instances that I got ticketed, I guess. That driving was illegal, according to the law. And then there's all the times that I drove "illegally" and didn't get caught by the po-po. (That's 5-0, to the layperson). When you think about it, I've probably only driven legally for like 17 minutes in my entire life. That's less time than most people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome spend on the toilet in a single day, on average (I have no data to back this up). Think about it.

It's not that I'm a bad driver. It's that I sometimes get a little too creative on the road. I'm left-handed, and if there's one thing I've heard about us lefties it's that we tend to think "outside the box." I guess my out-of-box thinking expresses itself on the road when I'm behind the wheel. It's not usually intentional--let me give you an example--I've driven with my feet before because I needed my hands to hold a book I was reading. In my defense, it was a big book--one of the ones you need two hands to hold, especially when you are at the beginning and the weight of the pages isn't evenly distributed. You can see the creativity here--I wanted to read the book, and rather than let the fact that I need to drive somewhere stop me, I came up with a solution that worked. It's called resourcefulness.

Ok, that didn't happen either. You might be getting annoyed here, with the bait and switch. But seeing how at this point in this blog the "you" I'm referring to is like 3 people tops, I'm going to take the liberty of drawing this out a bit. Ok, before "you" get so irritated that "you" sign off and go goggle more articles about the legal battles over Michael Jackson's estate, I'll give you a true list of all of the things that I have gotten tickets for over the years, in chronological order (not in order of seriousness): reckless driving (on the 3 month anniversary of me getting my license), speeding (55 in a 35), driving without headlights during a blizzard, driving without a seatbelt, speeding again (95 in a 65--this was when I was driving from LA to Pueblo, Colorado, by myself, in order to see the final concert of my favorite band ever, EVE 6. It was totally worth it), driving in the carpool lane without another passenger (I was hungover and late picking my parents up from the airport), reckless biking (that's bicycle, not motorcycle, and given to me by the same exact cop that gave me the seatbelt ticket a year and a half earlier. He also kept asking me how many speeds my bike had--"what is that, a 10 speed?" Asshole, right?), and speeding again (75 in a 50). You're probably wondering how I still have a license.

But wait, there's more. In addition to those tickets I got, I have also been pulled over (but not ticketed) several times. I once got out of a ticket by telling the cop that I was driving fast because I was looking for a gas station with a restroom and "it's kind of an emergency." When he asked me what I meant by emergency, I said "number one and number two." He just looked at me for a minute, said the nearest gas station was 10 miles down the highway, and let me go. I was pretty proud of that because usually I just take the ticket, and I can't believe it worked.

On top of those tickets and getting pulled over, I have also backed into 3 cars (4, if you count today), backed into a garage door (and broke it), run into a guardrail on the highway, and ran out of gas to the point where my car stopped . . . twice.

If you think that sounds bad, consider the worst (and first) driving story I ever had, which set the bar pretty high if you ask me or anyone else. (SPOILER ALERT: This story includes several of the incidents I just listed above. For fun, why don't you try to guess which ones before you read on?)

On the 3 month anniversary of me getting license, I was driving with my best friend, at night, on an empty road. Because I had been driving for 3 months and because I was 16, I was more than a little cocky when on the road. So, for fun, I said to my friend, "Watch this--this will be fun," and I started swerving between lanes. I did this several times.

Rewind about 3 hours here. Before I even left my house to go out that night, my car was parked in the garage. It was a beautiful car--a silver Jeep Grand Cherokee named Sonja (she has since died via being rear-ended). Anyway, I was late going out that night, so I pushed the garage door open button and hopped in my car. My car wasnt usually parked in the garage, and I was used to hopping in, backing up immediately and going. So I did. But the garage door wasn't all the way open yet. I felt this bump, heard this horrible grinding sound, and realized what was going on--I backed into the garage door and broke it. I examined the problem, determined that the door was indeed jammed out of the track and into the frame, and weighed my options. I could call my parents then, get in trouble and miss out on the night with my friends, or, "fix" the door, and leave a note for my parents saying "I'll explain about the door when I get home." I chose the latter. I used a hammer to beat the door back into the frame so that it could close manually and wrote my parents the note.

Fastforward to swerving in the road. You would think that breaking my garage door 3 hours earlier would have urged some sort of prudence on my when driving the rest of that night. Au contraire. Swerving while driving is fun--I will stand by that to this day. The problem was that the road wasn't completely empty--there was another car there. A police car. After swerving about 6 times, I saw the sirens and pull over. The cop was FURIOUS as he stormed to the car and asked me what the Hell I thought I was doing. At first he thought I was drunk, but I explained that no, I wasn't, I was just a dumb 16 year old fooling around. I think this made him more mad because he wrote me a reckless driving ticket--8 points. (In colorado, when you first got your license, you only were allowed 5 points before your license is suspended. In otherwords, I was pwned). So, I drove home, trying to figure out the best way to tell my parents not only how I broke the garage door, but how I got an 8 point reckless driving ticket as well.

I decided humor was the best approach. I walked in the front door, and my parents were sitting at kitchen table. Before they could say anything about the garage, I said "hey mom and dad--remember that time I got the reckless driving ticket after breaking the garage? Well you will after this." and I laid the ticket on the table. Their guts were not busted, so to speak. My parents are pretty cool though, and realizing that I was a dumb kid, kind of learning, not really putting anyone in real danger, they decided to give me another chance with driving. I had dogdged a bullet.

Four days later, I was late again. This night, my car was parked on the driveway (we all learned our lesson). Being late was especially bad this night because I was going to a friend's surprise 16th birthday party. So I hopped in the car, and backed up. Now, I live at the top of a cul-de-sac, so in order to get out, I have to turn almost completely around when backing out before I can drive forward anywhere.

Normally, this is fine. But that night, my Grandma's mini-van was at my house, parked along the sidewalk. Mind you, it was also dark that night. I pulled out of the driveway, continued backing up and turning around when all of a sudden, I heard a thud and my whole car LUNGED. I looked back and saw my G-ma's car and realized what happened. Being young, dumb and 16, I thought maybe there would be no damage, and I would get away with it. But just to be cautious, I thought I should check rather than assume. I flipped the car around so I could shine my headlights on the mini-van. Sure enough, there was a dent the size of my head in the sliding rear door.

At that point, I was pretty sure I needed to call my parents. So I hopped back into my car, and began backing up so that I could pull into the driveway again. It was only about 4 seconds before I heard ANOTHER loud thud and my car lunged forward AGAIN. That's right, I had backed into my neighbor's station wagon which was parked along the sidewalk in front of their house across the street. I got out and examined. ANOTHER head-sized dent in their car. Aawwwkkwaarrrdd. My parents took my car away for a while after that. I was pretty bummed out and feeling hard on myself until my dad told me that when he was my age, he totalled both of his parents cars in one weekend while they were out of town. Guess it runs in the family.

I think it's a combination of one or all of these incidents (maybe) that give me no credibility among my family and friends when something car-related happens that's not my fault. For instance, senior year of college, I lived in a house with my 7 best friends. We lived in South Central LA, so there was a gate around the house. We all had cars, so the parking got pretty crowded. One time, I was late (again), and needed to back my car out of a weird spot and get out the gate. I opened the gate, and was angling the car out--doin pretty well, too, considering my past. The gate usually has a sensor that makes it automatically reopen if something (like a car) is in the gate's path. However, I think because of the weird angle I was at, the sensor didnt sense that my car was half-way out when it started closing. The gate closed right on my left back door and stopped, and for some reason, didn't reopen. So, I had to drive out, with the metal gate still pressed against my car. Ya, there were a looooooot of scratches along my car from then on. No one believed that it was the gate's fault, not mine. Talk about the boy who cried wolf.

I think the worst driving thing that ever happened to me was when I was driving with my girlfriend up to the mountains on New Year's Eve, and the car spontaneously caught on fire. That is another story for another day. I promise I will tell that one and all of these others in more detail soon, but I feel like this is getting a little long.

I guess you could say I have car trouble. Some might say I am reckless, careless, un-fit to drive, more dangerous on the road than Hellen Keller (although I can proudly say that I have NEVER tried to read brail while driving). But you and I both know the truth--I'm really just a leftie.

All right all, thanks for reading. Until tomorrow, here is some more random great stuff that I reccommend to all.

Amazing and Totally Underrated Movie--Sorority Boys

TV show that all dudes, but really everyone, should watch--The Wire

Really Random but Awesome and Catchy Song--"Waiting for a Train" by Flash and the Pan

My favorite book in the world that I think everyone should read--Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

I hope to catch all of you on the proverbial flip-side.

Mikee P