Drive

            When he was younger, he was always afraid of getting in the car. Whenever he did, he was always amazed at how fast the car was going. It seemed ridiculous to him that all these people in all these cars were moving at such fast speeds. He thought about how they could all die so very easily. If anyone drove a little off course, they could crash and die, but everyone drove around at rapid speeds to get to the places they wanted to be at. Convenience seemed more important to everyone than their own lives. People were willing to risk their lives just to travel across town. Every time that he arrived at a place still in one piece, he was amazed at his luck.

            As he got older, he went on plane trips and the occasional boat trip. These seemed like even more insane ways of traveling. The possibility of traveling anywhere in the world in a handful of hours didn’t really make up for the possibility of falling out of the sky to his death. And the possibility of drowning in the middle of the ocean put a damper on the fun of being able to travel by boat. The only reason he got in cars, airplanes, and boats at all was all thanks to his parents. As parents tend to do, they forced him to take all these trips with them. They said things like it would be good for him and that it was perfectly normal to travel these ways. As much as these means of transportation scared him, he grew used to using them to travel.

            He eventually got to the age when it was time for him to learn to drive and while he’d rather not have had the pressure of being in control of one of these vehicles, his parents pressured him – hell, society pressured him – so he just tried to push the thoughts of death out of his mind. So, despite not wanting it, he got his driver’s license and continued on with a fairly regular life.

            After years of being pressured to travel in cars, planes, and boats and told he was irrational he learned to be ashamed of his fears. As a result, he didn’t tell people about them. Those were things that 10-year-old him said, now they were things that 25-year-old him only thought. No one needed to hear his fears – they would just ridicule him and tell him that they were irrational thoughts. So he went on living his life in fear, but came across “normal” to the outside world. He had a job and it really was convenient to own and drive a car. It was also, he told himself, a good way to fight these fears that he knew – because everyone had told him – were irrational. So he drove to and from work every day always slightly amazed that he arrived at his destination still alive. He continued to be amazed no matter how many times he drove somewhere without dying.

            All of that changed one day while driving on his way to work. He crashed. Somehow, after all these years of driving without any accidents – although always expecting them, he lost control of his car on this day. That was enough for him. He was a grown man and he had no one to tell him to get in a car. He decided it would be best to never drive again. He had known how dangerous driving was, yet he did it anyway and clearly, he’d pushed his luck at this point.

            Of course, it wasn’t as simple as choosing to no longer drive or get in any car. That was a big decision. He had to rearrange his life a bit to accommodate the complete lack of automobiles. He quit his job and got one closer to his house. It paid less, but he could walk to it in only forty-or-so minutes. It also helped fill the gap between his old pay and his new pay that he no longer bought gas. He took comfort in that even though there was still a definite loss of income.

            He also took comfort in getting to enjoy the outdoors. He got to breathe fresher air and he could – if time permitted – stop and look at things on his way to work. He felt like he finally got to really see the world around him now that he wasn’t confined into a car as he traveled. Yes, this truly was the live. His anxieties were finally justified. Always driving, despite his fear, had certainly taken its toll on him. The stress definitely hadn’t been healthy and now he finally to be free of the whole ordeal. He could just walk to his humble job and make enough to be comfortable – and on the way there and on the way back, he could take in his surroundings and see how beautiful life was.

            He’d often enjoy the smug feeling he got from judging all the saps driving in their cars. He never vocalized it, but he knew what they were missing even if they didn’t and he got quite a bit of enjoyment from that feeling. He knew he shouldn’t be so judgmental, but he had a bit of a mean streak. Frankly, if his mean streak only got as bad as feeling like people in cars were not getting to enjoy the world fully, it wasn’t too bad of a mean streak. He felt he could live with that mean streak – besides, it didn’t hurt anyone and it genuinely made him feel good.

            However, as time went on, walking the same route, twice each day, couldn’t maintain its original beauty. He’d seen the things on his way to work so many times that he could picture it all vividly on request at any point. So he chose a different route to walk. He wasn’t a dumb man, though; he knew that route would eventually bore him too. So one day when he didn’t have work, he figured out a few different ways to walk to work and changed the routes to keep himself interested – with some longer, more scenic routes for coming back from work.  On the way back from work, he had all the time in the world. No one was waiting for him. Sometimes, he wouldn’t go home for hours after work because he was out looking at the world – it wasn’t unusual for him to walk miles off the route back to his house.

            On one of his routes to work one day, he saw the most beautiful squirrel he’d ever seen. “Beautiful” is often not the word people think of when they see squirrels, even very good-looking ones – but this squirrel was, without a doubt, beautiful. And he’d spent years walking to and from work seeing all sorts of squirrels each day so he was about as close as it came to an expert on squirrel beauty. If there ever were squirrel beauty pageants, he could probably quit his job and get a job in that industry. However, at this point in his life, he was not aware of any sort of beauty pageant for squirrels and, thus, continued on his way to work.

            He only continued walking to work for a brief few minutes. It was at that point that a driver hit him with his car. Cars – as he knew – are a dangerous thing. It is amazing more pedestrians don’t get hit by cars. He hadn’t really thought about it, but he really was lucky to have walked to work all those days and not been hit by a car.

            As his ghost looked down on the scene, he thought how lucky he had been to have lived as long as he had. He had been in cars for years without getting into a single crash. He had eventually crashed his own car and hadn’t died. He had walked near cars – at least for part of the trip – on his way to and from work for years and hadn’t been hit once until now. It was amazing he hadn’t died sooner. Plus, he got to see that really beautiful squirrel. Hopefully, someday, in his honor, they’ll throw squirrel beauty pageants.