He drove for a profession and he excelled. A racecar driver, in fact, was he, the best as it pertained to league scoring. His peers feared him on the track due to his undeniable skills and consistently victorious strategies in clutch situations. Instincts had been honed from thousands of hours developing his craft. This was his living, a livelihood that provided abundantly. Away from the racecar, though, his driving was atrocious.
The driving proficiency was strictly relegated to the racetrack. He didn’t deny it, he knew it to be the truth. On the racetrack, driving 200 or more miles per hour, often twelve inches or less from his competitors, left him in a peace of mind akin to petting one’s dog or taking a walk on a moss-riddled forested trail. A drive to the local mall or across town to a favored restaurant would render him a nervous, tenuous, second-guessing wreck of a timid driver. Public roads populated by civilians were unsettling to him. If given a choice, he’d rather shave dry with a rusty razor than willingly sit behind the wheel for a three-mile drive on surface streets. Such was the severity of his mental trepidation.
On the racetrack with velocity vastly higher than civilian speeds it was safer, he reasoned. Yes, speeds are higher, but everyone’s a professional. Also, they’re all going in the same direction, there’s no cross traffic, street signals, pedestrians or cyclists, and everyone’s paying attention. Nobody on their cell phone, no texting. The racetrack, it was safer than a petting zoo, he furthered. 55 MPH on a freeway mixed in with sedans, pickups, minivans and SUVs made him panic. Uncertainty welled up for him at the thought of so many vehicles possibly not maintained to perform at their peak.
So awful was his lack of skill on public roads that his wife was the predominant personal driver. It was not to spare him from his non-race driving discomfort that she finally relented. She insisted upon being the designated driver for the betterment of the household. The role was assumed so that she no longer had to bear witness this ridiculously tentative and nerve-wracking driving. It ruined her mood and compromised her calm demeanor. She hated driving with him at the helm and it was not a topic of family humor, it was a serious matter. Serious, yet he relinquished the reigns of the family’s automobile without argument, discussion or so much as a raised eyebrow. The transition was peacefully made with no more formality than passing a salt dispenser across the table at dinner time.
Their eldest child, a daughter, came of driving age and made him proud from her first moment. In her younger years she’d become so accustomed to her father in the passenger seat that she instinctively took the car keys. He was thankful he’d raised a daughter considerate enough to take action without the need of an embarrassing question or forcing admittance of his deficiency. So many years had, by now, passed that his passenger-seat status was no longer a mental defeat to him. It had become a neutral activity similar to the recurring task of mowing the lawn. It was now the natural order of things.
Peace was on the horizon because it was nearly race season. He’d have pole position locked up soon driving one of the multi-hundred thousand dollar racecars at his disposal. Confidence impeccably resumed and on full display, his opponents grudgingly jealous of his cool professionalism. This was a less tense time of year for the family. His wife or daughter doing the driving, all pretending publicly that he was saving himself for the racetrack. His family, meanwhile, baffled how his transition to public roads was such an utter failure.
A mental block, that’s all. The basketball player who can’t shoot free throws. The professional singer who stutters off stage when not commandingly singing in front of an audience of thousands. Regardless, racing season starts next weekend and peace will be temporarily restored.
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