Social Awkwardness (Everywhere, Every Moment): Highway Driving

I'd like to begin this wonderful series of rants and discussions about the peculiarities of life by talking about the wonders of driving. From the first day, you sit down in a vehicle and realize you can't drive it by moving your thumbs on the thumbsticks or accelerating by holding down the right bumper on your controller. I'm talking about the moment either one of your brave parents hop in the passenger seat and suddenly they're a little more religious than you remember. You're parked in your old middle school parking lot and your given instructions but you keep hitting the gas and stomping on the break a second later, so now you look like an old broken down ride in front of a 90's grocery store. Let's skip ahead, you had a whopping three lessons and you're ready to drive alone...right? No no no, you take your behind-the-wheel classes through your high school and even though you haven't the slightest idea how to parallel park and you backed into a spot on the 51st try because there were no other cars in the lot and your driving instructor had plans that afternoon, you got your license. Now, let the fun begin.

You're on the road driving down to your college/university. You merge onto the highway and you quickly choose a lane to stay on. You're either on the right lane taking your sweet time or you're in the left lane with all the speeding cars that never seem to get stopped. You chose the right lane, congrats, you are probably stuck in between an 18 wheeler and a green van that is suspiciously closing in behind you. You grow tired of driving 58 mph and you just never know if the semi-truck in front of you is gonna suddenly stop, so you merge onto the left lane. Now you're speeding up, there is a car behind you that is speeding towards you, it looks like it's not going to stop, but you can't flee to the right lane now, you're a MAN or WOMAN, plus there are too many cars next to you to merge anyway, but I like the confidence. You awkwardly look through your rearview mirror and you see an agitated driver ready to ram you over, they are tailgating you so close, you're starting to wonder if they attached a hook and jumped aboard your vehicle. You're thinking "the nerve of this person, I'm already driving 5 mph over the speed limit". You drive past an opening with a sign reading "EMERGENCY VEHICLES ONLY" and you let go of the gas so you don't fly by a hidden highway cop. You know, the ones that have nothing to lose, enjoy being parked in between two busy highways alone during scary times at night and have vehicles straight out of Fast and Furious because when they smell your speeding, they go 0-100 (real quick). Suddenly, you check your rear-view mirror and notice the cop car hop on the highway and it is flying towards you, meanwhile, the tailgating maniac is just not letting go of your sweet bumper sticker, they must have terrible vision from a distance because they are dying to read your license plate up close. Low and behold it's your lucky day, the sirens come on and the maniac pulls off the highway and the cop is right behind him, you can finally breathe now.

Actually, you were so concerned with what was going on behind you, that you didn't notice you were tailgating the person in front of you. You look through their windows with your hawk-eye vision and you see some angry eyes looking back at you, you swallow a big gulp and the person finally merges to the right lane to let you pass. Now, it's an unspoken rule amongst drivers that if you're in the left lane and someone just merged lanes to get out of your way, you have to speed up and "pass that person". I mean, who would want to lose that privilege. You speed up past the person and you can feel their eyes beaming at you, judging you and immediately assuming the type of person that you are. It's okay, you tell yourself, now it's smooth sailing from here.

Suddenly, you hit the brakes as hard as can be because the semi-truck in the right lane just merged in front of you to try and pass another semi-truck. At this point you've had it, you're ready to ram into this vehicle and deal with the consequences. But hold on, you remember you have crappy insurance on your car that covers only alien attacks, and unless the back of the semi-truck opens up and little green dudes with laser guns start blasting at you, there is nothing you can do. You tailgate the truck and hope it moves over, after 7 and a half painstaking minutes where it almost feels like the truck on the right started to speed up to prevent it from happening, the truck in the left lane merges to the right. The road clears and it's a straight shot forward, you passed a sign that says "your university, next exit" and you're ready to take the exit and quit driving for a couple of years. As you near your exit, you squint and see a yellow sign that says "35 mph recommended" because the turn is steep, so you do a reverse back to the future because you're going 88 mph and sloooow down as you make that turn that feels like your vehicle is gonna flip over and you're going to land on your driver's side. Somehow, you manage to keep the wheels on the road, you come up to a yield sign and you see cars flying on a road that's supposed to be 25 mph. You turn on your blinker and you slowly merge onto the main road, but you forgot to check your blind spot and a car came flying behind you, slamming on their brakes, and smashing their horn at maximum volume, so loud that the horn begged for mercy. You jump in your seat and look behind you, you see a what looks like a man alone in his vehicle and he's just sitting there with his arm raised, flipping you off. This, this is driving on the highway in North America.

- Don't believe me? See for yourself

You have been warned...

Expressed by: Oscar Mendieta