Another Hubby Story!

I know you've missed him! (Or at least, his antics.)

To be honest, I missed having him to complain about - I figured I could earn a good living as a stand-up comic, just telling stories about Hubby...

Anyway, today I'm borrowing Hubby's car, so this morning he came and got me and I dropped him off at work.

It's raining today, and being October, there are quite a few leaves on the ground. The route we take to get to work from my apartment is called "The Boulevard", one of the LAST streets in Montreal to have an English name. It's a twisty-turnsy-upsy-downsy-lumpity-bumpity road that goes over the mountain between NDG and downtown. In front of some of the most beautiful homes you could ever hope to see, nothing under several million along THIS route! Between the potholes and school zones, most of it has a speed limit of 30 km/h (that's about 15 mph, for those of you who haven't converted). Unfortunately, it's also quite wide most of the way, and that means virtually nobody follows the speed limit.

We were doing about 60 km, over one lump and down another, quickly approaching a 90 degree turn. Fifteen years of being a passenger in Hubby's car have left me with deeply entrenched behavioural patterns, and I suggested to him, okay, loudly, that maybe he'd want to take that approaching curve at a slightly reduced speed, given that it was wet and slippery even without all the leaves on the road.

"Oh yeah!" said Hubby excitedly, "I got the car SIDEWAYS the other day!"

Like he's discovered gold, or something.

He continued, "It was at the point, you know, where the back left tire starts to wobble?! Only this time it didn't straighten out - the car just kept going the way the back wheel was! Slid for almost twenty feet! It was great!"

"AUGGGGH!" I retorted, unable to help myself. "You know, MOST people, most SANE people, would not be so happy about that! MOST people would be at least a little shaken up, you know!

He grinned at me. I warned him I was going to blog about this. He kept grinning.

I guess, to him, it's his fifteen minutes of fame.

Hubby drives like a maniac. Correction, behind the wheel, he IS a maniac. It's his way of making up for being so placid and easygoing the rest of the time.

When he first moved in with me, all those years ago, he went digging in a box looking for something, muttering "I'm sure it's in here..." Then a loud "AHA!" and he triumphantly produced a faded certificate for my viewing.

It was the certificate that he'd received from Skid School.

"There!" he announced triumphantly. "That's my license to drive like a maniac!"

Over the years, many people have listened to my complaints about how reckless Hubby is, and then they ask the obvious question.

"Which of you do you think is the better driver?"

And the answer is complicated. I'm no slouch behind the wheel - Hey! A FRENCHMAN taught me how to drive!

But the difference is in our approach. I am constantly on the lookout for what could go wrong, checking the positions of other cars in relation to mine. Slowing when there's not a safe stopping distance. Warning of danger ahead by tapping on the brakes. Giving pedestrians the right-of-way. It's called Defensive Driving.

Hubby, on the other hand, is out for a thrill.

When it has snowed, he's not satisfied until he's got the ABS to come on. It means nothing to him that ABS was designed to help drivers cope in EMERGENCY situations.

Here in NDG, many of the north/south streets had posts installed this past summer on the one-way streets. Four posts - two on each side of the road. The first set is about two feet wider apart than the second set. This gives the illusion that the driveable space is narrowing, and drivers slow down. A friend of mine has assured me it has made a great difference in the street traffic, cars now going actually close to the speed limit, instead of 40 km faster than it.

But not Hubby. To him, it's a challenge! "Hey - there's a barrier up there! Let's see how fast I can go through it! Wheeeeee!"

So I used to answer that although Hubby was better equipped to get us out of an emergency situation, being both physically stronger and therefore more able to control the car in an emergency, as well as having been properly trained to use the correct reflexes and emergency braking procedures, he was, of the two of us, much more likely to PUT us into an emergency situation, something most sane people try to avoid.

He missed his calling, you know. He should have been a test pilot.