Taxi Driver

I no longer wipe noses.  Instead, I drive kids around in my mini-van.  They don’t even have to be my own personal kids.  No.  I also pick up friends of my kids and sometimes friends of the friends.

Tonight, I had to drive to the nearby military base to pick up a teenager at the Visitor Center.  His family rather inconveniently moved on base.  (How dare they!)  Since it was 6 p.m., I thought I would outsmart traffic and avoid the freeway as long as possible.

When I emerged from my short-cut, I entered the freeway heading south.  I noticed and then passed Exit 18, which was problematic because I needed to reach Exit 20.  I’d unwittingly merged onto the freeway at Exit 19. Wrong direction!

Drat.  I needed to immediately exit so I could head north instead of south.  I began to swerve into the exit lane and nearly side-swiped a motorcycle.  (Sorry, Motorcycle Guy!)  I missed that exit completely.

By now, I was approaching Exit 16.

That’s when the semi-truck ahead of me blew out a rear tire.

It sounded like a little bomb exploding and immediately the tire flew off in a rectangle of black rubber.  I veered into the left lane without even checking my blind spot and screamed OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD, which, yes, is cursing, and NO, I should not curse, but DID YOU FEEL THAT EXPLOSION?

I exited (barely ahead of the semi-truck which pulled to the shoulder) and turned right.  However, the entrance to the freeway was not there.  So I made a fancy u-turn and circled around to enter the freeway going north.

At that point, I noticed a stricken face in my rear-view mirror.  My poor 7-year old sat in the center back seat with a look of abject terror on her face.  I said, “Hey, are you okay?  Everything’s fine!  I’ve never had an accident in my life!  You are completely safe!  Everything’s fine!  You were never in danger!”

And she wiped her eyes and whimpered a little.

My 17-year old said, “Well, at least you have something to blog about now!”

Indeed.