I just finished reading this piece by Ian, which dovetails really nicely with something I wanted to write about anyway, so go read it.

One of the things I miss most about being here is not being able to drive my car. Not that I would want to drive my car over here, you understand... it's kind of like teaching someone to drive. I have full confidence in my ability to do it, but I suspect it would reduce me to a gibbering nervous wreck. What I miss is driving like I did in high school.

Going to a private school tends to mean that your friends don't live in the same neighbourhood you do, and I had a few friends who were about a 45-minute drive away. I didn't drive on the highway back then, so I'd take little country-ish back roads where there was nobody else around if you were out there after dark.

I've always thought that part of the reason to drive a soft-top Jeep is so you can impose your musical taste on the rest of the world. So I'd be out there driving after dark, with all the windows out and rolled down and the music loud, as it has to be if you want to hear it over the wind noise.

I remember one time when I was driving back from my friend's house after dark with the music blaring, and I came to a stop at a red light with one other car next to me. There was nobody else on the road for miles, and I was playing my current favourite driving CD (I no longer have it, sadly, thanks to the jackass who broke into my car a couple of years ago), Space Bunnies Must Die. As people often do when they're alone in the car, I was singing along, and the song that happened to be playing was called "Mr. Psycho." I was in a good mood, so when it got to the part that goes "Mr. Psycho, he'll blow you away!", I looked over at the person in the next car and still singing, smiled.

He floored it through the red light so fast that I only had a glimpse of horrified eyes. I'm still not sure whether it was a comment on my taste in music, my singing voice, or just that he was a big giant wussbag.