I go home for lunch every day.  For the last couple weeks I’ve been driving like a psychopath. I’m so fed up with the wall-to-wall trucks, the girl doing her make up, the guy playing video games, the tesla’s that just make their own rules.  The best defense is a good offense so, pedal to the metal!   As is the nature of anyone mentally calling another driver an idiot as they pass, i must look to see what the idiot is doing. It is human nature – you do it, too!  

Today was a new predicament.  I mean, the usual wall to wall trucks and what not, but when I got to the right lane to exit the flow slowed to a steady 42mph.  I could see some industrial type trucks towing things so I just gritted my teeth and fell in line. (I’m a psycho, not an idiot! you don’t mess with big trucks or trucks towing things. that’s just common sense) The biz behind me thought if she got up really really close I’d go faster but I didn’t so she passed me.  She made it one car length ahead before she too accepted her fate and fell in line in front of me.  But see, now I’m annoyed and I’m not going to miss the opportunity to show her my annoyed face so I make plans to get next to her.  We exit, the industrial trucks continue north, but the flow does not improve, it actually dropped another 10mph.  Exiting the freeway at 30mph?!  (it’s a long ramp, guys!)  When the lane splits, Ms. Super Impatient squeezes in between two cars on the right revealing to me the cause of our slow down.

I don’t know cars anymore, not makes, not models – sometimes I can get the color right, but that’s the extent of my Motor Trend knowledge. The car in front of me is white. It is clean, on the newer end.  Some kind of sedan, maybe Honda?  The most notable feature was the chunks of rubber flailing from the bumper as the car continued to the light. Chunks. Big chunks.  I turned the radio down and could hear the chunks.  Oh man…  

Forgetting the buzzy biz in the black SUV I pull up next to the white car at the red light.  It’s an older man, balding, he’s leaned forward looking at his dash like he’s trying to understand an alert.  I stick my arm out and wave.  He doesn’t notice.  I give the horn a very quick tap (the muscle control required for a quick horn tap is almost beyond my fitness level) and he looks over.  He sees me waving and flips up his clip on sunglasses.  He looked so confused and I felt so bad. I thought back to all those nights John’s Uncle Vern would take my tires off and leave my blazer on blocks just to make sure I knew how to fix a flat and here this poor guy doesn’t even know he has a flat.  I mouth “YOUR TIRE!” and point to the rear of his car.  He gave me a smile and a nod and pointed to the side of the road.  

I don’t know if he was pointing to rubber chunks that had landed next to him.  I don’t know if he’d hoped I was going to change his flat.  I don’t know how many miles he had driven on that flat tire to leave a wake of rubber.  My light had turned green and I had to get home to let my pee-pee monster out. But it has left me wondering, what kind of suspension is on a white car that you are unaware that you’re driving on bare metal?!