How To Drive In The Rain

I signed onto the web-guru that is weather.com today to check out the forecast for sunny NC, which recently, to my dismay, has been not-so-sunny. I clicked on the lovely 10-day forecast button for my zip code... waited a few moments... and began to peruse the upcoming days.

Today: Light Rain and Wind. High of 61, low of 56. Yeah, cool, that's about right.

Tomorrow: Rain and Wind. High of 68, low of 60. Par for the course.

Saturday: Showers. High of 75, low of 61. And a link to an article entitled "How To Drive in the Rain."

...
...
...

What in the bloody hell? Are they kidding me with this?

We live in North Carolina, people. Not the Sahara. Do we really need instructions outlining how, exactly, we are supposed to drive in the rain?

Let me just tell you something. The showers they are predicting-- they're mild. Meek. Like a little baby lamb. A lamb-let, really. Today's 100% chance of rain has left simply a few droplets of moisture on my office window... and I think that was 2 hours ago.

We are not in the midst of monsoon season here, people. We don't even have a monsoon season.

What we do have, apparently, are a bunch of paranoid losers who need instruction on how to navigate four wheels when it's spritzing.

The article, on which I clicked out of my sheer desire to see something completely stupid, acted as if driving in the rain were a near-impossible feat. According to them, successfully driving in the rain is almost as possible as flapping your arms really hard and then, consequently, flying to the moon.

I was somewhere between tips on proper windshield wiper material, how to replace the little rubber strips on your wiper blades, and advice on how to spend a whopping 80 smackers on rain shields for your windows (just in case you are in dire need of rolling down your window in the midst of our impending sky tsunami) when I just had to get a hold of myself.

And then it hit me. Like a ton of bagels.

There are places in the United States in which people genuinely cannot function on wheels when water falls from above.

I was in California earlier this year. The sun was setting and I had places to be. I took off down the highway in a Jeep ready for a little adventure when, GREAT MOTHER OF PEARL, it started to rain.

Nothing alarming, really. I think a grand total of 15 drops hit my windshield.

I did what I thought any sane driver would do. I reached forward and *click* turned on the wipers.

Swish-swish. The rain was gone. Just as quickly as ding-dong, the witch was dead.

But. Apparently, I was the only person on the entire highway capable of doing this.

In an instant, the nicely flowing traffic came to a complete stand-still. The screech of rapidly braking tires resounded for miles. It literally sounded like the screech heard round the world.

Oh.
My.
Gosh.

And then, for the next 2.5 hours I sat in traffic without going anywhere, I was able to ponder the idiocy of those around me.

Perhaps I should make 1.6 million copies of "How To Drive in the Rain" and send them west.