Blind Spot

This isn’t about my daughter’s vision, it’s about that place in the car where you as a driver can’t see another car.   I have a bit of an overactive worry about changing lanes into someone who’s in my blind spot.   I’m not sure if this is from excessive warnings from my driver’s education teacher when I was in high school or if it’s from near misses by me.  

It’s one of those things that gets negatively reinforced over time.   I’ve always become slightly anxious when I’m a passenger in a car and I notice our driver hanging out and not moving out of a car’s blind spot.   I’ve even said something on occasion when it looked like the other driver wasn’t the type who really paid attention (as if I could tell across two cars).

The blind spot can be defeated by using your mirrors well in conjunction with turning around.   And I always turn around, even though it’s hard for me to do because it’s more of a me turning around instead of my head turning around because with the fused vertebra in my neck I just can’t turn around that far.

But for some reason today I was lulled into complacency.   It was probably a combination of two things.   First, I was expecting there to be a fast beeping sound indicating I was close to another car.   I wasn’t in the car I typically drive so I wasn’t getting that feedback.   Secondly, I’d been in my lane for some time and peripherally we sort of keep mental track of what cars are where.   I didn’t think there were any cars behind me.

So with my ignorance in tact I turned on the signal and began to change lanes to the right.  And I heard a horn honk from that blind spot spot and so I moved back into my lane.    Shortly the other driver passed me by and this is what happened: he gave me the thumbs up sign and smiled at me.

No finger, no angry glare—he was friendly.   I smiled and did the silent “thanks” word back to him and our cars drifted apart.   And I thought about it.    I’d just made a mistake.   I was expecting to be chided for it by the random person it almost impacted.   But instead I got a different message.  It was almost like, “we communicated through the horn and just prevented an accident together.   Good teamwork”.

I don’t know who that guy is, but next he sort of made my day simply by not being angry at me for making a mistake.   I’m going to try and do the same in the future if someone almost lane changes into me.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was playing with the remnants of his chocolate pudding pie slice last night.   He was smearing it all over his plate, getting full coverage in a circular pattern.   Grandpa asked him to stop but he said, “I’m making a chocolate world!”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been helping me take care of our friend’s cats.  One of their cats is very friendly and exceptionally tolerant.    She picks him up and carries him around.   She told me, “Mr. Cuddles is my best friend cat.  I love him.”