Distracted Driving

It was late Thursday morning, and like most Thursday mornings, I was heading west on I-90, just past the River Road Toll Plaza. I don’t normally do much in the way of people watching on this stretch of my commute, as traffic usually becomes less congested after everyone passes the tollbooth and merges into the appropriate lanes. When I’m stuck in bumper-to-bumper gridlock on the Kennedy, sure, I’ll look around me and see people doing all sorts of things behind the wheel, but once we’re moving, I return my focus to making sure these distracted drivers don’t crash into me. At times, this can be quite the feat.

However, since I was in a lane that was ending in a quarter mile, I put my turn signal on and glanced to the right. Whizzing by me, at about 70 miles an hour, was a guy in a fancy white Buick who was eating his lunch. Out of a Chinese take-out box… with chopsticks. I wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or impressed by this guy, hurtling down the expressway in what may as well have been a projectile missile.

He wasn’t anything like the run-of-the-mill morons I see, who send texts, read the paper, or attempt to apply makeup while they drive. He took the art of distracted driving to a whole new level. The activity that was taking his eyes off the road actually required some talent and a fair amount of manual dexterity! Because if he’s as cool as he seems, surely he’s too cool to drop leftover fried rice onto his tan leather seats.

Meanwhile, I remained uncool yet alert in my ugly maroon Sentra, making sure to steer way clear of the Ultimate Distracted Driver.