The Bad Kind of Multitasking

My first car, a horrible 1980 diesel VW rabbit, had a secret power that almost made it worth keeping as long as I did. It could emit a huge cloud of smoke from the exhaust pipe upon command. The command was hitting the gas pedal with anything approaching firmness. The cloud created when going up a steep hill was enough to clear traffic behind me for up to a half a mile. The true genius of this particular feature was that it is so very hard to honk at the idiot behind you to any real result and sometimes you really need to get their attention.

I first discovered this when stuck in traffic going around an accident and that moron in the hideously expensive vehicle riding up your tail pipe while looking out the side window and talking on his phone that we've all run into was inches from my bumper. In retrospect letting him hit my car would probably have saved me thousands in the never ending repair bills it took to keep that nightmare of a car running as it wouldn't have taken much to total it. At the time however that didn't occur to me. Instead, in panic as he came increasingly closer to my rear bumper while looking ninety degrees to the left out his open window, I depressed the clutch and hit the gas hard. Not only did he back off immediately, but he rolled his window up and started looking forward as he drove. I do not miss that car, but I occasionally wish I could have that feature installed on whatever car I'm currently driving.

We've all seen, and sometimes even been that idiot on the road who is texting while driving. We've also seen that moron in the hideously expensive vehicle riding up your tail pipe while looking out the side window and talking on his phone in stop and go traffic. But rarely do you see someone reading while driving. I had once heard of this phenomena. When I was a child my father and uncle worked with a woman who did just that. In the stop and go morning traffic through L.A. my uncle would see her driving eyes up, eyes down, eyes up, eyes down through the slow two hour commute. I always felt it probably explained the high number of accidents in that area, but as she was never in any of them I had no proof. I did however feel she was unique in this bizarre behavior. That is until yesterday morning.

Yesterday morning on my drive into the office I found myself once again wishing for that special feature to be added to my car as I looked at my rear view mirror and saw behind me, eyes up, eyes down, eyes up, eyes down while at a stop light. Reading while driving always seems like a bad idea, at least to those in the cars around you, but when audio books are so readily available it also seems so entirely unneeded. When the light turned I put as much distance between what could only be the offspring of my father's former coworker and myself. Still her car was right behind me all the way to work and even to my building. I ran up the stairs from the parking garage to the lobby elevator and just as the doors were closing my multitasking co-commuter slipped into the elevator. Slightly flustered she noticed that her top was inside out. Who could help but think, reading while dressing? It was all I could do not to ask what the book was. Clearly it was captivating.