Twas the Night of Christmas

Now, I’m not going to discredit my husbands driving, because honestly—it’s far better than most peoples. He has never been pulled over, never been in an accident, and has driven more different kinds of vehicles than I can count, including MATVs in Afghanistan while TRYING to find IEDs. He has also driven me (literally) all over the country—from North Carolina, to Minnesota, back to North Carolina, then down to Florida, Alabama, and up to Minnesota again. So, I have ridden MANY hours with him. And I have no complaints. But I do have to say this—his attention to detail while driving is pretty much non-existent.

Here’s a short example: one of the times we were driving to or from North Carolina, there was a piece of wood lying in the middle of the road. When I am driving and I see a piece of wood lying in the middle of the road, I avoid it at all costs, because my thought is “It might have a nail in it, and I don’t want a flat tire.” A logical thought, I think. However, Steve just drove right over the top of it. And I said, “I hope there wasn’t a nail in that!” To which Steve responds, “A nail in what?”…“Umm…that board that was in the middle of the road that you just drove over”… “Oh, I guess I didn’t see it”. While I’m thinking “How in the world did you NOT see that!?”

I also can’t tell you how many times we have been driving home at night—during prime deer season—and I will be “on the watch” for deer. When I see one, I will say “Deer!” and point to the direction in which I see it. I do this, with the intention of pointing it out to Steve, so he, too, can see it, watch it, and slow down for when it decides to jump out in front of us. Generally when I do that he says “What?”, and again, I say “Deer!” while pointing even more frantically in the direction of the deer that I just KNOW is calculating the perfect time to decide to go springing in front of us so it was sure to be a direct it. But still, Steve stares dumbfounded out the windshield and continues driving full speed ahead, while I attempt to stare the deer down DARING it to cross the road…

Well, tonight we are on our way home from the in-laws Christmas, and as always, Steve is at the wheel. We are talking about who knows what, when out of nowhere, comes a deer that had just made a HUGE bounding leap and was flying through the air. I saw it, almost immediately and knowing we were going to hit it, all I could manage to squeak out was “AAAHHH!!”, as I literally stared him in his eyes out the side window as he reached the moment of panic when he realized he shouldn’t have made that fateful leap. I was almost positive that in 1.2 seconds I was going to have a deer sitting on my lap. Then we hear “THUNK!” on the side of the Blazer. And, of course, to no avail, Steve says, “What was that?” In my head, I was thinking, “Umm…did you COMPLETELY miss the whole episode with the flying deer?” but I just responded “A deer. We just got hit by a deer.” His reponse? “A deer?”…“Yes, a deer.”

And the next words out of his mouth? “Well you could have warned me.” (Because as per the story further up the page, you all know that warning him works SO well). I informed him that warning him would have done absolutely no good—partly because we would have hit him no matter what, partly because my mouth was unable to form words, and partly because he wouldn’t have paid any attention to me yelling “DEER!” anyway.

I suggested we should get out and check the damage once we got to town before we got home, so we were in a well lit spot where we could see. Steve responded with “We have flashlights”. But I convinced him by saying “But the damage always looks way worse in bright lights.”

We checked it out and luckily it’s not terrible, although any body damage is usually pretty expensive to fix. There is a little bit of a dent in the wheel well, but we were at least able to laugh about it on the rest of the way home.  

As for my project? There is no picture, because it’s dark and cold outside—plus I don’t know that I can really be that artistically creative while photographing a dent in the vehicle anyway. I am also not entirely sure that there is a lesson to be learned here either. Maybe if I thought about it long enough, but I think I am just going to leave that out…for now.