Themeless Writing

I had to drive on the highway to hand deliver a Christmas gift to a friend I have this year.

That is a big deal for me.

Who knew I had friends?

Driving on the highway is always a big deal for me, too, because I, unlike most highway drivers, do not want to die.

Highway driving is stupid.  I feel like my odds would be better shooting myself out of a cannon out of a plane that is being flown by a blind person and is also on fire (both the plane and the blind person), then skydiving down with a parachute that, why not, is also on fire, and land in a tank of liquefied gluten (to which I am intolerant), which is full of sharks, all while duct taped to an injured seal.

And that’s just the part where I have to merge onto the highway.

It’s not that I’m not a competent motorist.  I drive fantastically.  It’s the rest of you that are the problem.  You drive like rabid bunnies on crack, randomly veering between lanes at approximately 95 million miles per hour, like you’re trying to make the Kessel run in only 6 parsecs.

I suppose it’s not really fair to describe all of you that way.  Some of you have the opposite problem.  The moment you hit the highway, you realize you’ve misplaced your gas pedal and must rely entirely on inertia to continue propelling you forward at 65 centimeters per decade.  But you’re not alone, because you are always accompanied by a sympathetic friend in a different car who will, in solidarity, drive right next to you at the same “speed” so no one can get around either of you.

That makes the guy in the middle of his Kessel run incredibly cranky.  I know because, while I have been stuck behind you, the Kessel Run Guy has come up behind me really fast, and drives so close behind me that his mail starts getting delivered to the backseat of my car.  And as I basically chauffeur Kessel Run Guy around in the backseat of my car, we are having a nice conversation about what a bad driver you are.

That is why they need to add a special lane to all the highways.  It’ll be just like the carpool lane, but it will be for people like myself who just want to drive the speed limit.  Call us the “Speed Limit Demons”.  We have a need, a need to follow all traffic regulations as publicly posted on roadway signs.  We do not want to drive like we are running from death nor drive like we were declared legally dead several miles ago.

But it’s not just other drivers that make the highway such a terrible place.  Weather also plays a factor.  Especially the weather where I live, Canada allegedly, where instead of miles per hour, we measure speed in Euros per moose.  We also drive on the opposite side of the road.  I don’t mean the left side of the road.  I mean we drive on the underside of the road.  Which is why you never see Canadian license plates while driving.  All our cars are underground.

The weather here has been harsh lately.  It could really be summed up in 4 words: freezing, snowing, and apocalyptic fire.

In that order.

First it got cold.

Then it snowed.

Then we had wildfires where it had snowed.

That’s right: our snow is flammable.

Imagine what it was like driving through that.  You haven’t known terror until you’re careening down an icy road, caught in front of someone going the speed of light and behind someone who might actually be moving backwards, and it starts to blizzard, and half of the snowflakes are bursting into flame on impact, causing panic in a nearby field of snowman, all now ablaze.

Like formula 1 racing through a winter wonderland in Pompeii.  That’s what my highway drive was like.

But I did it.  I drove on the highway, delivered my gift, and drove back.  I survived the whole trip with only minor psychological trauma.

And isn’t that what the holidays are all about?