Husbands behind the wheel drive wives crazy

Editor’s Note: The following ran in 2009, but it still holds true. Tammy’s husband got a speeding ticket a couple of weeks ago driving home from Mississippi, so he really can’t argue.

I’m sure women are out there who think their husbands are good drivers, but I haven’t met one.

Somehow the subject came up the other day when I was talking to friends, and they got fired up.

One woman told how her husband didn’t speak to her for the rest of the trip, or hours after they got home, after she yelled at him for almost running into the back of another vehicle on an exit ramp. Her husband told her he was well aware of the vehicle in front of him.

That’s what gets me. How are we supposed to KNOW our dear husbands see whatever it is that’s scaring us to death?

I usually say, “David, that car in front of you is turning,” as he’s bearing down on it, and he says, usually slightly irritated, “I see it.”

Are we supposed to just wait until they crash into the back of a vehicle, and then pull our mangled body out of the wreckage and say, “Sorry, honey, I thought you saw it.”

Another friend has a husband who’s a truck driver. Yeah. That’s a fun one. Try telling him anything when he’s behind the wheel.

He gets a little annoyed, shall we say, when someone is going too slow. So, my friend says, he flashes his lights at the vehicle, speeds up on the person’s tail, and then zooms around. Meanwhile, her foot is about to push through the floorboard, and her back has left a permanent impression on the seat. This has been going on for years.

He points out that he has driven about a gazillion miles in his big rig without an accident. That may be, but it doesn’t mean he hasn’t caused someone else to have an accident, a heart attack or road rage.

However, the woman did admit, “He’s the best backer-upper, ever.”

A young woman chimed in about her boyfriend’s driving, too. His response, when she complains, is, “I’m a pilot.”

That’s great — but unfortunately he has to drive on the ground.

I might have mentioned to these women that my husband pulls up too close to cars in front of us at stoplights, and that when he looks at scenery to the left, I watch as our vehicle starts drifting across the lane in that direction.

When I voice my complaints lovingly (OK, minus the lovingly), my husband says, “I’ll be happy for you to drive.”

One of my friends said, “That’s what [my husband] says!”

(I have been asked to protect the identities of these women. There’s nothing like the wrath of a man whose driving is scorned.)

I don’t want to drive. I want my husband to drive better.

A woman who overheard this conversation stopped to vent about her new husband’s driving.

She said they both nitpick about each other’s driving. Her complaints about his driving include the minor fact that she’s “never seen his eyes on the lane in front of him.” Instead, she said, he’ll say, “Oh look at that puppy,” and things like that. He’s always driving off the interstate onto the rumble strips along the side.

My husband asked me what my column was about this week, and I told him.

He said, “Oh, fiction.”

Bless their hearts. They’re in denial, too.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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