Thirty- something speaks
The legend of looking the wrong way

Mike Maddock My late great- aunt's driving record was flawless, which violated so many laws of nature and physics that Edward A. Murphy may have completely changed his philosophy on life had he sat in her passenger seat just once. Why was my great- aunt a complete contradiction to Murphy's Law? Because she could drive through downtown Columbia during rush hour and carry on a face- to- face conversation with a back- seat passenger without so much as a slight drift into oncoming traffic.

She was one of those people who believed it was much more important (and polite) to look someone in the eye while speaking to them, than to eye a stop sign or pedestrian cross- walk. It didn't matter if that passenger was wide- eyed, white as mountain snow, repetitively slamming the imaginary brake on the floorboard, and screaming "Dear God! Please stop!!!," my aunt was going to carry on a proper conversation.

Amazingly, she never had so much as a fender- bender, although she did go through brake- pads and tires like potato chips due to the occasional and quite necessary skidding stops. She also may have left a wake of piled up automobiles and finger- waving fellow motorists in her rear view mirror, but her car never received the slightest scratch.

I can't imagine if she'd been around for today's cell phone addicted, Blackberry using, mobile DVD watching generation of drivers. Even she may have rear- ended one or two people with all those distractions.

My great- aunt was an anomaly though, and I'm afraid part of her legend lives in my four- and- a- half- year- old son. While my son has some time before he starts driving, he is already exhibiting many of my great- aunt's qualities with one slight difference; he prefers to look at me or whoever happens to be near when he's running the opposite direction, riding away on his bike, and even taking care of business at the potty. The difference is that my great- aunt could drive and talk without slamming into a tree. My son, apparently, cannot.

He routinely runs into playground equipment while yelling to his friends who have been trailing behind. He smacks parked bikes, people, and whatever else happens to be in the way with his bike as he chats it up with anyone in view, and he consistently misses wide- right as he turns his head toward the conversation and away from the center of the toilet bowl. You'd think he'd learn after a few bumps to the head and several strolls into the hallway with wet socks, but maybe his fate is a genetic certainty.

There is hope though. Maybe my aunt could talk politics without bouncing across three lanes of traffic because she'd had so many years of practice. Her childhood garage may have been filled with busted scooters and broken bikes, and maybe her first car ended up as scrap metal from all those hard lessons. I don't know, but I do know my son has a long way to go before he'll change any of Murphy's laws. There's enough evidence on his face, his bike, and my bathroom floor to prove it.