It can’t be just me.

Driving for most of all forty-five years since giving up my skateboard at age sixteen – as most sexagenarians – I’ve been successful at staying in my own lane. Save a few miles of mishaps and minor ticket travesties, vehicular events have been .. well .. uneventful and mundane. Here to there. Leave place A, arrive at place B.

Ordinary. Brick, pavement, dirt, and concrete roads leading to entertainment, work, or errand destinations. Every day. Thousands upon thousands of signal lights, signs, and road markings dictating our every move. Sounds from road noise can lull us into a mental hypnotic haze as cruise control takes over during longer trips.

With all that, a full bucket of paying attention while operating a vehicle is floating on wheels. As it should be. “Defensive driving”, as I was always taught. Not 100% fool-proof, but the best blueprint for effective, safe traveling two blocks or three-hundred miles. Dad said that two word phrase to me from the passenger side of a brown manual shift Pinto decades ago. Seems ironic, looking back, “safe”, and “Pinto” crossed lanes in my life about the same time … err, never mind.

My guess would be most of us practice safe driving, right? So, this can’t be just me. It can’t be. The past year (give or take a few weeks) the same thing has been happening on the regular. Today – once again – this specific strange occurrence visited my driving experience.

Leaving a Subway sub shop shouldn’t have had anything to do with it? Now, I did order a completely different sandwich. A wrap instead of the bread. Lest, I digress here.

So many different places I’ve pulled out into traffic. Slowly. Carefully.

I have two eyes, a relatively good rotation of my head, … and (counting the windshield and all windows) eight different ways to see all traffic coming in all directions. Once a decision is made to advance my life, my car, my day … forward, … the gods of traffic do this really weird thing.

…and, to repeat myself AGAIN… it can’t be just me.

There’s no traffic anywhere. I look. I double look. Up, down, left, right, … even those fortunate (or unlucky) enough to be in my passenger side confirm my eyesight evaluation. I trust but verify whenever possible. Always.

I think you have to know where this is going.

The second I am in my lane choice, there’s a person closer to the back end of my car than my proctologist was at my last exam. To make the situation worse, apparently these particular individuals are late on their way to an emergency White House meeting. I do believe they enter through a universal worm hole to irritate the living yield out of me.

Honestly, from where do they come? It used to be only the crotch rockets. Those super-hyped, over 120 mph cycles we can’t see, yet two seconds later they are on us flying by as a blaring blur of dangerous daredevily.

I get the normal tailgaters. We’ve all had those for years. If truth be traveled freely here, I must admit bumper stickers have been easily read by this writer on occasion as well; however, defensive driving 101 is almost always anticipating what the other drivers sharing the road will do.

Pulling out onto a road .. I’d be more than happy to anticipate what a driver would do – If that driver was actually ON the road.

More and more cars on the road now than back years ago, of course, when I sat in a (very) used Pinto learning how to shift without stalling the engine. The enjoyment faded, somewhat, after that day when I realized a car was needed for the jobs after school. The car meant more responsibility. As they say, a right of passage. I went with it.

Probably everyone’s attitude changed since then? We weren’t as anxious. As much in a hurry? We went with what life gave us.

A lot more cars with a lot more human stress behind the wheel now, … and so many additional distractions.

Pretty sure the road is always clear as is my mind. Passengers confirm it. It’s not a mirror coincidence this has been happening. Until I am satisfied with a real world answer, I’m going with my alien/worm hole theory.

If I look back one day and see a vintage brown Pinto tailgating me, however, …

… then I’ll give up and simply go back to my skateboard.