It's All In The Reflexes

Weird day. It began with a phone call at 5:00 A.M. when my step brother-in-law thought he was calling my brother-in-law regarding hurricane Katrina. Followed shortly by the inverse of the two aforementioned parties and a missed speed dial button. In other words, I went to bed at 2-ish, was awakened at 5-ish, and at 3-ish I ran out of steam and fell asleep for an hour. On the plus side, though, I was awakened by thunder and looked out the window to see this:

When the rain stopped, we drove down to the Tucson Mall. Along the way, my reflexes were put to the test. A young woman suddenly decided that she and her car needed to occupy the exact same space as our car. She didn't use her turn signal, wave, or even turn her head in our general direction. She just went for it. Luckily, I wasn't groggy from my nap. She didn't have to make a turn, she didn't even speed up. I honked the horn at her, and she gave me an "oh well" hand gesture. My teeth are grinding so much that sparks are flying out of my mouth like one of those little wind-up Godzilla toys. (I'm trying to cut back on cursing, and it's also good to be able to spit forth flame on cue.) Then, however, came the part that made Deb and I curse up a storm. First one set of wee bitty hands appeared, then another. The woman had two small kids in the back of the car. If I hadn't been paying attention, the kid on the driver's side would have been crushed. If I had panicked, I could've easily hit her car and made her spin, and probably both kids would be crushed. (My car was the larger in this equation.)

Now, I may not understand why people want to have children, but I understand it even less when the people who do have children don't give enough of a damn about them to turn their heads when they're driving on a three lane highway. I guess you can always make more kids, right? Idiots.