Every once in a while, I’ll park the car and turn it off, then hear a chuckle escape my wife’s lips. “You park like such a farm boy,” she’ll say, smiling and shaking her head. It’s not a derogatory comment; in fact, I like to think she finds my parking skills (or lack thereof) rather endearing.
She is, however, generally correct: When I get out of the car, I’ll assess my parking job myself and realize that I have indeed parked at some completely illogical angle. This usually happens in a relatively safe space—such as in our driveway or in front of friends’ homes—where my atrocious lack of parking prowess is, for the most part, harmless. Painted lines in a parking lot tend to help, though I generally have to invoke my “on the line is in the lines” rule.
The looseness with which parking norms are adhered to extend to my driving as well. My hands are almost never at 10 and 2; the left is usually draped at about 12, with my right elbow resting on the terribly comfortable armrest auto manufacturers are considerate enough to install. I recline the seat way farther than I should and pay far too much attention to the radio, which these days really struggles to find a halfway decent country song to play. The dadgum sunflower seeds are never where I expect them to be, so a considerable amount of attention is dedicated to digging around under the seat as I barrel down the freeway (in the name of staying awake behind the wheel, of course).
To be clear, my driving record is far from stellar. Yet I find myself constantly defending the indefensible attitude and body language I have behind the wheel.
In the great state of Idaho, a place I have called home for the vast majority of my life, a kid can begin taking driver’s education classes at the ripe old age of 14-and-a-half; a driver’s license can be issued to a driver on his or her fifteenth birthday.
The relatively young age at which we can legally drive is a strange source of pride for us Idahoans. Welcome to Idaho, home of great fishing, great potatoes and student parking lots at middle schools!
Granted, in little farming communities across the country, kids are learning to drive long before they hit puberty. But that lowered legal driving age seems to have some strange effect on the general driving population. Most of us aren’t imbued with the speed demon recklessness you might associate with young drivers. (That award goes to our Utahan neighbors, who seem to see every speed limit sign with a big “95.”) I’m not sure there is a word to describe drivers in my neck of the woods. Casual? Lazy? Perhaps a combination of the two: lazual? Yes, that’s it—the roads here are full of lazual drivers like me.
We lazual drivers drive slowly in the fast lane. We cut diagonally across parking lots. We stop on the railroad tracks, supremely confident in the odds that a train won’t come along before the light turns green. We don’t complain about getting stuck behind a spud harvester on Highway 33. Our ideal speedometer reading is anywhere in the range of 40 to 60 miles an hour, whether we’re in a school zone or on the interstate. We’re only vaguely aware of the concept of turn signals. And, by golly, we don’t put any more effort into something as elementary as parking than we have to.
I’ve never been in what you might call a major car accident. However, like I said, my record is, um, not great. My lazualness has probably kept me out of big wrecks, but it has certainly gotten me into several minor ones, which, financially speaking, aren’t much less costly. Frankly, there’s no way for me to justify the way I drive.
Isn’t that the way our businesses and lives are? It’s easy to justify the corners you cut or the proverbial signposts you ignore, right up until the point you can’t. Every grower has, at one point, planted more than he should have, sprayed less than he should have, suffered the consequences, and continued to defend the decisions. Friends, this ought not to be. Like Grandpa always said, it pays to do things right the first time.
Except for parking. If they can maneuver around you, you’re good.