BoomSpeak! Your Whole Life's In Front of You

fiction

Driving Miss Crazy

driver You don’t want to let Theresa get in your car if you can avoid it. She has these crazy uncontrollable outbursts where she yells things at you while you’re driving, such as “Look out for that fuckin’ car!!” or “That asshole is going to turn in front of us!” or “The douche bag is going to run the light!”

I call it autotourrette syndrome.

It can be very scary if Theresa tries to grab the steering wheel or blow the horn. On one occasion, Theresa thought the car in front of us was a little slow on the green light, so she reached over and hit the horn and then stuck her head out the window and screamed, “Move it fuckwad!” The car in front hit the brakes and a very large man got out. He looked liked he was going to come 2 steering wheels toward us but instead he just gave us an emphatic middle finger, got back in his car and drove off.

I told Theresa not to do that again or she could never, ever ride in my car. She promised it would not happen again, but the warning yells continued. Each time she yelled, my reaction was the same. I would hit the brakes hard and pray that if there was a car behind us, we would not be rear-ended.

Like the boy who cried wolf, Theresa became less believable over time. Then I found myself almost imperceptably slowing the car when she yelled and proceeding as normal. It got to the point where I just ignored Theresa entirely, and went on my merry way.

I know you probably think you know where this is going. That one day, Theresa yelled, “Watch out for the dickhead stepping off the curb,” and that I did not heed her warning, junior and the dickhead did step off the curb, whereupon I ran into him and his body sailed up into the air and over the car, landing fifty feet away, surely killed on impact.

But it was nothing like that at all. One day, I just got tired of Theresa yelling about the assholes, douche bags, and fuck heads. After she let another crazy warning fly, I pulled the car over on to the shoulder of the road and shut off the engine.

“Theresa,” I screamed at her, “you’re driving me fucking crazy!”

Her eyes welled up and she turned to look at me.

“You don’t have to fucking yell at me, fuck face!”

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

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