That'd be on account of my "driver's lung."

I’m entering Week 3 at the new job, and the question I get asked most frequently isn’t about the co-workers. That question ranks around #2, or #3.

The one burning thing inquiring minds want to know is How Do You Manage That Long, Awful Drive?

It’s an hour in to work, and an hour home, though the drive home seems much quicker. I’m not sure why.

Anyway, I thought about that question this morning, when I was stopped, yet again behind a truck hauling half a mobile home. We were squenched over on the right side of Highway 45 (not Highway 45 Alternate) and were at a complete standstill because of road construction.

Ahem. I have no shame in saying that I hate a trucker.

I was thinking that as I sat there, idling, listening one more time to Paul Simon’s “You can call me Al.” I listen to a lot of Paul Simon, these days. And I suppose you could say that is one way I “manage the long, awful drive.”  But, as I sat there thinking, “God, I hate a trucker,” I had no choice but to recall the very root of this One-Way Hate Wave.

That’s right, a “hate wave.” (I’ve admitted in previous blogs that I possess an addiction to puns. Don’t look so surprised).

I didn’t always hate a trucker.

I wasn’t always aware of them. Until I moved. The first time. Since that legendary move I’ve logged a lot of hours on America’s highways; hours I’ve spent and wasted, on the road, over the last ten years. I’ve accomplished automotive feats I didn’t know I was capable of: stranded in Louisville, Kentucky, waterlogged in Wheeling, West Virginia, broadsided in D.C., towed in Manhattan, and iced into an embankment outside Nashville, Indiana, one hill away from the Little Ole Opry House. Loretta Lynn was coming that weekend. I’ll never forget that; I could just see the top of the sign from where I was stranded.

I still can’t change a tire, but I digress.

As you can imagine, over the course of a near decade, I’ve learned a great deal about patience when driving. I’ve also learned a great deal more about what I simply cannot (and will not ) tolerate as a driver.

I think drivers have to be the most selfish people in the world.

I know I am. I get behind that wheel and I mean business. I automatically assume, the second I slide into my cloth interior front seat and turn the AC on full-blast, that I’m the safest driver in the entire Western Hemisphere, and because of that, you shouldn’t do any of the following, while in my vehicular presence: swerve, text, call, wear an iPod, misuse a blinker, cut me off, try and out-pedal me at a 4-way, second-guess my speed at an intersection, refuse to merge when I’m coming down an off-ramp – this will warrant honking, and I hate honking; I consider that to be the Panic Button of a bad driver - or challenge me at a red light, especially while eating a McRib. (But that’s another story, another blog).

I don’t feel like it’s asking too much from the rest of the mobile public to adhere to and honor these simple rules. And please note: this is not a case of monkey-see-monkey-do. I can’t help it if I’m better at multitasking than you are; work on your reflexes and then we’ll drag race.

I will honestly say that it wasn’t easy for me to develop my tolerance for stupid drivers.

It turned out to be my cousin, who was in her boyfriend’s truck, at the time, and on her way to work…but still…we all look the same on the road.

No, what I’ve done, you see, is over the years, I’ve developed what I call my “driver’s lung.” I didn’t do it with focused breathing or yoga lessons, like a runner does – why run, when you can drive? I did it with nothing but my sheer will power and a stern, unwavering constitution. (And yes, it took a lot of convincing and a serious amount of eyes-wide-open-praying, but I succeeded).

I’ve clocked thousands of road-hours, coupled with hundreds of road-rages, but finally, I developed an over-sized capacity to forgive the idiots who apparently wait until I’m on the road to even begin driving. Haven’t you felt that way before? Every time I’m in a hurry, it seems, that everyone else then decides, Hey, Kris is in a hurry to get somewhere…everyone, quickly, get in your cars and go somewhere else. Now.

Truckers, still, of all the nincompoops on the highway get to my last nerve quicker than anything else. I can’t entirely blame them (yes, I can). They do drive the Everyman’s version of a tank on our nation’s interstates. And they know it, too. You don’t like them? So what. Are you going to say no to an 18-wheeler? I’m not. (Better add that to my list, then).

And no, you’re not, either. Nor could Patty Loveless. But they’re not about to get a dozen roses from me.

Nowadays, though, instead of offering some physical gesture across the dotted line to them, I simply take a deep, really deep, breath and think: They’re not going to the same place I am. At some point, they’ll turn, or the road construction will thin out and I can pass them, or I can stop, and I tell myself this quite a bit, at the next gas station and buy a Red Bull, sugar-free. I don’t have to keep time and rhythm on the road with them.

We’re not in a caravan.

They’re just in a hurry to deliver their furniture, or refrigerated fish, or cocaine, or chicken, whatever it is truckers deliver these days. And, even though I don’t care what it is, I do care that we share that in common: we’re all merely trying to get off the road.

We just want to get to our destinations, whether that’s Indianapolis, Memphis, or Scooba, Mississippi.

That makes it a little easier for me, to pretend we all share in the same plight: getting somewhere and sitting still. There’s a whole school of psychology locked away in that comment, I’m sure of it. I’ve felt it before, when I’m out on the road, alone, hours at a time…you know, you develop a kind of kinship with your traveling neighbors. You pass each other, time and again, you run into each other at roadstops, you even, every once in awhile, start to have an expectation. No matter where they may be going, you expect you’ll see them again, when you pass them a third, fourth and fifth time.

And, it’s a little sad, when they finally find their exits, flip on their blinkers and do what you can’t wait to do yourself: get off the road. Of course, in my mind, they’re always going somewhere much more wonderful and exciting than I am…though, before today, I’d have been more than happy to challenge them to find a place more exotic, in its way, than Scooba.

That’s probably going to change, now.

The trucker I was behind this morning, well, when I went to lunch, I saw him again. He’d brought that half a mobile home to campus, and parked it right next to my office building.

Apparently, it’s going to be a “dorm” for the spillover students, from the record enrollment we’ve had this semester.

Sigh.

I might need two Red Bulls.

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