Just Slow Down

Just slow down.

This is a second new mantra for me, enshrined after last week’s “Just stay home,” which I wrote about here.

But sometimes you can’t stay home. Sometimes, you have to go out.

I had to go out today.

Had is not the right word, exactly.

Because I wanted to go out! My good friend is a professional designer and an artist extraordinaire who also loves making jewelry. She has jewelry making tools! She invited me to join her for a “Jewelry Fixing” party. I’ve had a bag of broken earrings in my drawer for years. It was an excellent chance to get some of those fixed.

It rained earlier but cleared enough for me to get a walk in. But then, just as I was heading down to her house, the rain came back in torrents, and was especially heavy as I merged onto the freeway.

When the rain falls in sheets and the wipers can’t keep up?

It’s a good idea to slow down.

So I did. I slowed down. Some drivers who were more confident than me passed on the left and zoomed along, while others slowed down and stayed behind me. I felt a sense of community with those cars. I was the leader, setting a safe, reasonable pace. We were a careful, happy line of travelers. A grey Prius stayed right behind me. Prius drivers are cautious, polite folks, after all.

But then the Prius driver’s inner speedster must have woken up. He pulled around me into the fast lane and rocketed down the freeway.  

The rain was still falling. Hard.

A minute later, I watched the Prius lose control, ram the center divider, twirl around several times in the middle of the freeway, and finally skid over to the shoulder.

I turned on my hazard flashers to warn the cars behind me and was relieved to see the Prius driver get out of the car, apparently uninjured.

Still, something like that will shake you up.

I kept driving at a respectable pace. The rain let up a little. At the bottom of the hill, both lanes of traffic slowed. Two CHP cars were on the shoulder, lights flashing. They had stopped to help the driver of a car that had also recently had an accident. The car’s little front end was caved in. I wondered if that car was one that had passed me a few minutes earlier.

I do not know why so many of us are in such a hurry, especially when we get into our cars. Sure, there have been times when I have driven too fast. Ask my son about the time we realized in the car on the way to school that he was supposed to check in for his PSAT test a few minutes before school actually started, and we were running late for the normal school start time. He will always remember that day. But usually? I don’t mind being one of the slower ones on the freeway (usually a few miles an hour above the speed limit, honestly. But not more than that). It’s peaceful. It feels safer.

It is safer. It’s safer when the weather is sunny and bright. It’s safer when it is snowing or the road is icy or rain is falling so hard that the wipers can’t keep up.

Mantra number one? Just stay home.

And if I can’t? Go slow. And say a prayer for the cars that whiz past me (and for myself) because who knows what lies around the next bend for any of us.