Friday, July 29, 2011

Day #290 Why the delay? - and my driver's ed teacher

I went on the computer last night (Thursday) to post this entry – and my WiFi connection wouldn’t work. I have no idea what I did, but this morning (after I got the oil changed in my car and bought a new gas cap to the tune of $25 because the one that was on EllieBug when I bought her was the wrong size and apparently I have been leaking gas fumes uncontrollably for the past year)… Anyway, I got on the phone with CLEAR WiFi and a wonderfully patient woman walked me through the process of uninstalling and reinstalling my CLEAR. Now it works! Now I can get caught up. So, here’s what I wrote last night that you should have been able to read right after your breakfast this morning. Sorry for the delay.

I was backing out of my garage yesterday, hoping that the bees taking sips of water from my leaky rain barrel would see me coming and get out of the way. So far, I think they’ve been pretty good about that. I haven’t seen any flattened bees in my driveway.

People could learn something from the bees.

A friend of mine was in a car accident recently. She was exiting from a grocery store parking lot, trying to turn left. Nothing was coming from the right. Several cars and a big SUV approached from her left. She waited for the cars to pass her. The SUV put on its turn signal, indicating it was ready to turn into the parking lot. Things were still clear on the right. The SUV did, in fact start its turn, at which point my friend pulled out and was rammed by the little car that had been tucked, unseen, behind the SUV.

She hadn’t seen the little car, and the driver of the little car didn’t see her. They both would have had a better day if they’d had my Driver’s Ed teacher at Wasson High School
W A Y  B A C K  W H E N.

He from used to say we had to drive constantly guarding against the impossibilities—the car, the fallen tree, the person walking on the pavement.

·        There can’t be a car behind that SUV. I would have seen it way down the road.

·        So what if I can’t see my way around this bend; there’s probably not a pedestrian there (or a stalled vehicle, or a boulder, or a fallen tree . . .)

Bees learning to drive, uh, I mean fly, would have to careful about saying:

·        There can’t be an enormous metal monster coming out of that cavern; we would have heard it before now.

The good news is that my friend is healing nicely. Her wrist is not broken; the bruises are lessening; and she had insurance. Her car is not healing nicely, but it could have been a lot worse.
 

Bumper Sticker:

“Don’t Drive Faster than Your Guardian Angel Can Fly”


BEEattitude for Day # 290:
       Blessed are those who avoid running over us bees, for they shall not have to put up with bee-guts on their tires.

_______________________________ 
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2 comments:

The Cat Bastet said...

Your driver's ed teacher reminds me of Mad-eye Moody: "Constant vigilance!" (I had the same kind of teacher.)

Fran Stewart said...

More than 50 years later, I find that my driver's ed teacher is the one teacher I quote the most. I learned a lot from many other teachers, but for sheer practical living lessons, he turned out to be the best.

The sad part is -- I can't even recall his name.