Okay folks, I know I seem to blog about things that happen when I’m driving, but honestly, I drive a lot, therefore quite a few of my life’s experiences happen while driving. So I feel compelled to share them with you. Take them as funny anecdotes or serious foreboding warnings, either way, enjoy.
The most recent I can only blame on me. Well of course I’d like to blame it on something else, but alas, what happened afterward is solely on me.
I was driving (which is a given in this particular blog) along a long and slowly winding two lane road. The sun had set but it was still light enough to see, although the shadows were creeping ever so slowly across the roadway and the evening haze had set in making everything moody and blurred. I was admiring the autumn colors of the trees along the edge of the road and off into the distant on the hillsides. I pondered the lack of bright reds and the abundance of vibrant yellows and wondered what trees had which colors. I ponder a lot when I am driving. Some of it deep and philosophical like the meaning of my life, some of it mundane like grocery lists or errands to run, sometimes it’s story lines and characters (which can and has led to other events that have taken place while driving when I tried to write down notes and drive at the same time – hence the purchase of my handy dandy voice recorder – which on a side note, I can’t find. Where is my OCD when I need it?) and some of my ponderings are neither deep nor mundane, but just my mind spinning and spinning and landing on various things, such as the color of the leaves.
So there I was, bee-bopping along to my Alex Clare CD (thank you, sis!!) singing to the top of my lungs, musing about the trees when all of the sudden I saw something move across the road. I slowed down, dropping my speed and waited to see what it was. I scanned along the side of the road looking for a furry face or shine back of eyes, nothing. Then something skittered across the road again! I slowed even more. Thank goodness I was alone on this road or whoever was behind me would have been slowly getting annoyed by now. Although it was dusk and it was getting harder to see in the hazy evening light, I knew that something was definitely moving across the road. I am sure by now you have used your excellent powers of deduction and know what is moving on the road, but sadly, it hadn’t occurred to me by this point as I was driving. It would take a few more moments before I would come to realize what it was.
I slowed even more because these creatures kept skittering across the road, over and over again. Was it a massive migration of frogs? Was a tiny flock of miniature birds hopping across the road? Then nothing. All movement stopped. I crept forward a little more and when nothing moved I sped back up to the normal 55 miles per hour. As I came closer to the area where the creatures had made their voyage across the road I lifted my foot off the gas, just in case, and glanced from side to side looking for any movement. Then suddenly in front of my car, mere feet ahead of me, something flipped up and flew at my windshield. I screamed and slammed on my brakes. Once again, thank goodness that no one was behind me, or this tale would end quite differently.
When I pried my eyes open, relaxed my shoulders and the white knuckle death grip on the steering wheel (all in a span of about 2 seconds) I realized that nothing had shattered my windshield and I had not ran into anything, I then saw what had jumped up and attacked my car.
A leaf.
Yes, my fine readers, I was attacked by a leaf. A yellow one to be exact. And the tiny fluttering creatures across the road? Leaves. Leaves being blown by the breeze. Of course it was leaves! There was no migration of frogs or skittering birds. Why would I even think that?
Now you can’t hear the cynicism in my voice or the sarcasm as I write this, but know that it is dripping from every typed word. I, yes, I, M.L., screamed and was scared by a leaf. A jumping leaf, mind you, but a leaf nonetheless.
So that is why I said that I am the only one to blame in this tale. I blame myself for having too active of an imagination to think that l-e-a-v-e-s where anything but. I blame myself for not paying enough attention to the road because I am paying too much attention to the l-e-a-v-e-s still in the trees.
Of course some of you, and you know who you are, will say that there is a simple solution to all of this. Glasses.
Watch out for jumping leaves, (and don’t drive behind me at dusk)
M.L.
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