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The Scariest Two Miles of My Life

A couple of weeks ago, I was heading out to meet up with some friends.  I wasn't exactly looking forward to the drive; it was a rainy Friday night, and I was leaving right around rush hour.  Still, it made the most sense for me to leave at that time, so I steeled myself for the journey.

However, as is wont to happen in my life, plans very quickly changed.  The mother of a couple of infants from the day care was home with a sick child, and she was going to be late to come pick up the other two.  Now, she knew full well that she had to bundle up a sick child, get both herself & the sick child to our house, pick up two more children, and then march right back to her house with three little kids.  Still, she didn't even question this plan, because that's more or less what parents do.

My mom, on the other hand, realized that I was headed in the same direction as the children's house.  So, rather than making this lady jump through all sorts of hoops, my mom offered to have me drop off the kids at their house.  The lady was okay with this plan, and very gratefully accepted the offer.  Now I just had to execute on this plan.  Remember that part about steeling myself for the journey?  I think I did that about two more times.

For starters, it took forever to figure out how to put the car seats in properly into the back seat.  Now I'm normally not one to inconvenience others, so leaving the car doors open when there's oncoming traffic is not something I generally support.  In this case, though, I was far more concerned with making sure the car seats stayed where they were supposed to stay.  If people driving by had to make sure they drove a little closer to the center of the street, so be it.  Those car seats were going to stay put, dammit.

By the time I finally got all that figured out, I put the two kids in the backseat and turned on the radio to entertain them.  The kids' house was all of two miles away, along a road that I've driven a countless number of times.  Still, I had little kids in the car.  Worse yet, I had someone else's little kids in the car.  There was no way I was going to do anything to jeopardize the munchkins' lives.  I was going to do everything in my power to make this the safest two miles ever.

And take every precaution I did.  I made sure the rear windshield was perfectly clear, so I could see behind me.  I wiped down the mirrors on each side, so I could see the cars on either side of me.  I turned on the defroster and made sure that I could see out of the entire front before I started driving.  I checked my rear view mirror, and even waited a couple of extra minutes for the car to warm up.  I'm telling you, I wan't taking any chances.

Once I started driving, I immediately started wishing for one of those "baby on board" signs.  I normally think that those things are an excuse for people to be careless about their driving, but about 30 seconds after I started driving, I suddenly understood the appeal.  I drove slowly, and I drove carefully.  I checked my mirrors more often than I usually do.  Again, this was about a 10 minute drive, and it was pretty much a straight shot on a straight road.  I knew that, but I still wasn't messing around.

To be honest, I don't really remember if the kids were being particularly fussy or not.  I remember being glad I had turned on the radio, because the Christmas music helped to keep them entertained (thank you, KOIT).  Otherwise, I couldn't tell you if they were crying much or not.  Sure, there were a few "I need attention" type wails, but I really don't remember much else.  I was paying attention to the road and all those crazy baby-killing road-raged maniacs out there.

After a very smooth two mile ride, I pulled up to the kids' house and rang the doorbell.  The mom helped me get the kids out of the car (I stupidly picked one of the kids up out of the car seat; she just lifted the whole car seat, baby and all), and thanked me for dropping them off.  I told her it wasn't a problem, and drove off to that evening's outing.

I hit some traffic, I was about twenty minutes late, and I had to contend with some rain along the way.  Honestly, though, it wasn't no thing at that point.  You could've asked me to drive twice that distance at half the speed, and it wouldn't have been nearly as stressful as that earlier drive.  I had survived the scariest two miles of my life, after all.

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