Pluggers by Rick McKee for November 19, 2023

Eh no wonder them femmes is drives males crazy eh.

in place of rumble seats, cars gained grumble seats.

My new car does that now. All kinds of lights, steering wheel shakes and buzzers when some guy walked into the bike lane unexpectedly. He was mimicking a squirrel, I think.

Time to let the Back- Seat driver …. Drive ;-)

He’s already using his blinker, and he’s been using it for the last 50 miles.

We’re on vacation, and Hubby is doing all of the driving. He doesn’t like to take his eyes off the road, which is VERY frustrating. The GPS will say, “turn in 500 feet” and the name of the road will pop up on the screen. Hubby will not look at the GPS or the street signs, so he invariably turns at the wrong place, and the complains _ vehemently_ that the GPS is all wrong. I tend to be soft spoke, and he is herd of hearing, which is a really bad combination, and when I speak up, he accuses me of yelling at him.

I must love him. I haven’t killed him.

Yet.

Oh, he says my driving makes him nervous.

I stop and ask my wife if she would like to drive? If not be quiet!

And they usually are sitting in the front seat. My wife is for evr telling me I drive to fast – “Dear, I’m driving the speed limit”. My adult children say I drive too slow. Can’t win for losing.

A backseat driver’s license is used at least as much from the front seat.

There have been a lot of studies over the years that show that some people are direction-oriented and others are location-oriented. Direction-oriented people find the direction they want to go [they can often tell which way is north even without stars or a compass] and just keep heading that way. Location-oriented [my label, not a technical one] people note end-locations with respect to other things along the path: “Turn left after the gas station and go three blocks. Then turn left just past the school . . .” One type if better at locating a specific site inside a maze and the other is better at finding their way out. More men tend to be direction-oriented, which may be why early men became the hunters and women became the gatherers [more likely to note what plants grow where, etc.]

when this happens, I simply say, “do you want to drive”? and it ends. of course, I did stop and pull over to the side of the road a few years back. Stopped the car, handed her the keys, and got out of the car. She took the hint. On the flip side – she can do whatever she wants when she drives and I ride along in silence. go a different direction, fine with me. go whatever speed you want, fine with me. turn left, honk your horn, get a coffee, play music or not, whatever. the driver is driving, you’re tagging along, not their driving instructor.

Hard to be a back seat driver when there is only one bench seat in that truck. Riding shotgun with commentary is what normally happens.

and then there is the dashboard driver aka GPS.

Maybe because, starting around plugger age, we begin to worry (thus become more aware of) about losing driving rights to old eyes (and toobright lights), slow reflexes and just plain not seeing the immediate issues at hand.

Ex-wife’s grandmother did that to me. Once. I stopped at the first safe place and gave her the option of getting out and walking or letting me drive in peace. She was quiet for the remainder of that and every other trip we took.

Can I get an AMEN!!

It’s like she’s stuck on auto-pilot.

Nope, never……