Friday, August 14, 2009

It's like a train wreck, really.

I don't know why I tell people stories that make myself look worse, but for some reason they always entertain me the most, so THEY MUST ENTERTAIN YOU TOO!!

I went out yesterday for my second (count it: 2nd) foray into the wild wild world of Irish roads. I drove. By myself. For the second (count it) time. I was doing fantastic. Despite the fact that I hadn't driven a manual transmission for years, I was shifting and clutching so smoothly it was like butta, man. I was even making the little noises to myself when I pulled the gear stick. (I need little things to distract me from the fact that I am on the left side of the road and haven't had a Hostess cake in months.) Driving a stick, it's like riding a bike. Once you've driven a manual 1987 Nissan Maxima down Wesley Street, you never forget how to play a car like a finely tuned piano. (Note: the Nissan Maxima had a great sunroof that had to be opened by sticking a screwdriver up into the opening mechanism and cranking. True story.)

So. I dropped The Hubster off at the pub with two of his work colleagues and turned down a narrow residential street. There was barely enough width in the road to allow two cars to pass each other. I did like we do in Texas and used somebody's driveway to turn around, and proceeded back down the street on the right hand side, only to come face to face with a van driving IN MY LANE!
I played chicken with him for a few yards, waiting for him to get out of my way, but he just kept a-coming. What nerve, I thought. What a complete jerk. So I did the thing that any indignant loser does when they unknowingly drive down the wrong side of the street into oncoming traffic: I took the moral high ground.

"DON'T MIND ME, I'M JUST DRIVING HERE!" I hollered at the windshield.

At this point I am again going to do what any indignant loser does when they act like a total redneck in a foreign country. I would like to apologize to the citizens of the Republic of Ireland on behalf of my husband, whose fault it was that I was driving in the first place. If he hadn't needed a ride to the pub, no one would have ever had to witness my obstinacy, road rage, and traffic violations.

Oh, and if you were present when I ran the red light on the M-50 at approx. 12:36 a.m. later that same evening, please lodge any complaints to Mr. Edmund Sheridan, Esq. Thank you very much.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi - I checked out your blog - very good, nice to see it from a different point of view. Could you have been driving down a one way street perhaps?

alyse loving said...

It was not a one way street, unfortunately. I was just driving down the right hand side!