After a weekend automobile trip across state lines with Judy, and after reminiscing with classmates at my 25 year class reunion, one thing has been made abundantly clear; I have the dubious distinction of being the worst driver anyone who knows me knows. Judy may have thought that she was the only person who has had to deal with this. As it turns out, I've been proudly scaring the poo out of friends and family alike since 1981. Indeed, my record dates back to my very initiation into the activity: driver's education. Apparently, I was like the live traveling play version of the driver's ed scare movie "Blood Runs Red on the Highway."

There was another troubling revelation as well. My memory really sucks. As classmates and teachers regaled me with stories of "Hey, remember when you did this, and remember when you did that...?" I sat there with a befuddled look on my face, as if to say, "Really? That sounds cool! What did I do next?" Whether this was the result of the beginnings of Alzheimer's sucked of the tops of a million Diet Coke cans or the maniacal homicide of myriad brain cells with the blunt instruments that were Keystone and Milwaukee's Best, I had underwhelming recall of a host of events that my old high school chums could recount with near total recall.

To be fair, in a town with a name like Plainville, Kansas, it should be expected that a moderate level of intoxication would be beneficial in making things somewhat more interesting. It is not to say that Plainville was a prototypical, vanilla, small Kansas town, but the closest we came to having a resident who was a person of color was if someone had gotten really embarrassed or sunburned.

Now I'm not saying that I would drink and drive or that drinking was the cause of my diminished skill. I'm saying that I'm physically incapable of driving with anything approaching skill when I have any other person or stimulus vying for my attention. I'd be lying if I said alcohol was never involved, but in the majority of cases it was merely my legendary ability to be amazed by nothing much.

I was reminded of this when Judy and I talked to my first college roommate, Wes.

"So we're in our room, the lights are off, and I'm trying to go to sleep. Then every couple of minutes, I hear Billy giggling. Finally, I yell 'What the hell are you doing?'

'Tickling myself.'

'How is that even possible?'

'I found a feather sticking out of my pillow.'"

I smiled a little at the sudden remembrance of the simple pleasures of being easy to entertain.

"Then there was the time he kept himself occupied with a spoon for like, an hour and a half," Wes said, pantomiming the way I would move convex side of the spoon towards and away from my face, chortling at the way it contorted my reflection like a fun house mirror.

"In my defense, that was pretty darn entertaining," I countered.

So pretty much any time I'm chauffeuring another person, it ends up being a near death experience for either them or their underwear. During my sophomore year of college, my buddies and I decided to drive to South Padre Island, Texas for spring break. Done at the last minute on a whim, we at least had the foresight to work out a drinking and driving schedule. Basically, when a member of the group had a driving shift coming up, he was cut off eight hours prior in an effort to make sure he was at least moderately detoxified. Having abstained for the prescribed period, I took my turn behind the wheel. After a few missed turns and questionable lane changes, my shift ended somewhat prematurely near the twenty seven minute mark.

Then there was the time I drove a car full of my fellow classmates over to the college in the next town to the south to take the SAT tests. You know your skills are tenuous, at best, when your passengers need to get inebriated just to ride with you.

Truly, as I said before, these harrowing experiences go back to the very beginning. While taking our summer driver's ed course, it was common practice to drive to the same college town where we took the SAT's to practice both highway and interstate driving. I-70 met with the highway on the north side of town so we'd get on the interstate there and practice lane changes and what not. When my turn came, I dutifully looked over my left shoulder to check my blind spot. While doing this, I simultaneously veered left to the point that our instructor, Mr. Jaco grabbed the wheel and yanked it back to the right, saving us from a grisly death as a large red stain on the side of an overpass.

"Whoa there, Bill. Looking for Indians?" I believe were his exact words. Feeling lucky to be alive, we exited the interstate and decided to go to McDonalds for dinner. On the way, I promptly turned the wrong way on the other side of the divided highway thinking I was on the frontage road. This resulted in the second life saving grab of the day for Mr. Jaco. Despite the obvious and voluminous evidence to the contrary, I was certified at the end of the course as competent to operate a motor vehicle. So as one can clearly deduce, this was all Mr. Jaco's fault.

Be that as it may, it has shown no signs of improving as I have grown into blundering manhood. The weekend of the heavy spring snow storm in April, Judy and I went to karaoke night at a bar here in Brighton. We headed home at about eleven thirty. I preface the following by saying that our standing agreement regarding karaoke is that I sing and Judy drinks. By definition then, I also drive. Since that was the case, we took my car that evening. My legendary ADD-induced, life-threatening revelries only marginally eclipse my immense lack of patience. After starting the car and waiting nearly forty five seconds for the window to defog, I decided that the three inches or so of visibility at the bottom of the windshield would be enough. As we lurched forward, a sudden, sickening crunch and a sideways nudge alerted us that I had managed to sideswipe some stationary object.

"What'd you hit?" Judy said in that world weary way that all husbands have heard and all wives get tired of continually having to use.

"Let me check," I said, getting out of the car. "Utility pole," I replied surveying the two dented driver's side doors, the driver's door handled broken jaggedly in two, and a nice horizontal line of brown creosote extending across the white doors, bringing to mind a pre-adolescent boy's underwear. Deciding the pole was in no danger of falling and realizing there were no witnesses, I accepted the fact that with a $1000 deductible, a recent ticket, and only ten payments left on the car, I would henceforth be known as the driver of the impressively dented white chick car. The only thing less impressive than driving a Cavalier is driving a Cavalier one has dented on his own in a single car accident with a large piece of wood.

Well, I'd love to tell you more about my life threatening adventures behind the wheel, but I really should wrap this up now. After all, I am driving.