The older I get, the harder I find it to drive. It's not anything to do with the act of driving; it's a trust issue. Specifically, it's the unspoken contract with other drivers. My panic begins in traffic when I realize there are hundreds of them around me driving two ton hunks of metal only inches away while their minds are absorbed in the daily rituals of life. Then, as speed increases, they start coming from all directions at ever increasing speeds, still distracted. This is when my fear truly blossoms. These people around me are idiots, they are the morons who elected our politicians, the imbeciles who can’t pee in a public toilet unless it’s directly on a seat, the deranged individuals who you try to avoid making eye contact with a hundred times a day.

And yet, there they are, within an arm’s reach, piloting death machines, restrained solely by a verbal contract given as a teenager to a faceless government employee to obey strips of paint and some colored lights. The only thing still stopping these suicidal mass murders from fulfilling their kamikaze missions of doom is a vague concern that their insurance may not cover skull fragment removal from their front bumper. One foot to either side and they’ve finally caused the fire-soaked genocidal vehicular pileup that will assure them their place as the right hand of Death himself.

So I try not to think about it, but occasionally it becomes too much. When I get overwhelmed, I pull into an empty parking lot, sit for a minute, and remember that, even though these people have the potential to kill everyone, so do I. Then I pull back out into traffic and await the inevitable.