Deadly Distractions

I throw my backpack into the backseat, announce to FD:

I'm doing something radical. I'm just leaving my phone in the backseat of the car.

He goes into a rant:

You, on a bad day, checking email while driving, texting, answering calls, making calls, talking on the phone. . . you're still a better driver than most people.

I think it's about skill, attention, coordination, . . .blah, blah, blah.

And that is so about denial, I tell him.

It is radical, and delicious, I learn, driving without the extra stress, without having to attend to one more thing, the phone. Throwing off the yoke of the volunteered slavery, I find myself changing channels on the radio, figuring out how to do this without ever taking my eyes off the road.

And would you believe? As I'm thinking about this, about how scary it is, knowing that the guy in the car behind me, the woman in the car in front, is tempted to distract, that song comes on, Your Song. Rod Stewart is singing it, not Elton John, and Rod sings it even better, something else FD would disagree with me about.

How wonderful life is, while you're in the world.

They all have people, probably, most of them, that they value, that they don't want to lose, who don't want to lose them, not for the sake of a lousy text.

Makes you kind of wonder, doesn't it, what we're doing?

therapydoc