Carman V-Carminator

…in other words Sunday driver!
For those not familiar with, Sunday driver is the person who is supposed to drive only on Sundays and has limited or none experience of the art since he does not circulate enough in order to “get it” (the experience I mean!).
You see, below a certain mileage one cannot have a natural reflex of driving, he must think about it before he acts and until he does we have some kind of catastrophe in our hands.
By the way, the brand new model of a Sunday driver is the one who has the mileage, since he drives around a lot, but is mentally never “there”. For example he is covering mileage on his cell phone while driving and he is a Master at it (on blah-blah I mean!)

It is usually the stupid things that leave a man flabbergasted, so let me share with you the agony of naming this text. The challenge was, how could I fit in one word the title for a single text that would give you the true measure of incompetence behind a steering wheel… After much consideration, and internal conflict, I came up with Carminator! As you understand the resemblance with Terminator is not accidental… but there are differences. For example, the Terminator is merciful; he will still warn you and say “I’ll be back”. Don’t expect that same kindness from Carminator… he will come “into you” without any announcements or warnings!
Here are a few of his victims… I mean titles, which didn’t survive him:
“Meet HIM on Sundays”, “Death by surprise”, “The Dark Side of Senna”, “Menace on wheels”, “License to… steer”, “There he goes!” etc.

You can buckle up now, we are going for a ride!        
A good driver should be prepared and attentive like a Second World War pilot on a mission, but nothing will prepare you for Carminator, once you meet him on the road… His stupid smile might be the last thing that you will see, he will ditch you and he will have no idea that he did (that is why he will keep on smiling as he comes into you and after he is done with you).
But… where are my manners anyway?! Here, come, I will introduce you to Carminator himself, step by step, or shall I say… piece by piece.

His drive
If you think that you can outthink Carminator in the choice of his car then better think again! Since usually this is his first trap… So, is he maybe “hiding” behind a conservative kind of car?! Unfortunately Carminator is unexpected, fluid and will drive anything from an Old timer to a sports car and from an SUV to a van… I realized that from early on as a young driver and I can remember all the times when I came up face to face with him…

The encounter is like a kind of magic! You see the same face every time, but the car is different. They say that when you are about to die you see your entire life passing in front of your eyes… They say that also you might see the man in the black robe standing right above you… But better watch out for Carminator’s careless grin! For there is no comparison to it…
As your mileage increases with time you meet him again and again, and the encounters stay alive in your memory, no matter how much time has passed…

Once, with my first car “Christine” I saw him coming right at me, from a blind corner while overtaking a truck! And what do you know?! He was sitting in an old VW orange minibus like those the Hippies once drove. With the corner of my eye I caught the truck driver, who unable to save the moment, tried to warn any oncoming driver (…me, at the moment) by horning, waving and screaming his face off (as if anyone could hear him!). Result: I immediately drove off the road to my right and remained barely hanging at the edge of it. Had I touched the brakes, I would be history, and no text for you!
When I managed to recover I realized the passive calm of my personal Carminator… He was the perfect contradiction to the hysterical truck driver’s face, he was calm as if being… in trance!!! All this in a matter of a second or two, but the moment lasted enough for me to remember… Above all, he had no clue what he had done, he was… innocent!

Of course we would meet again, and again in the future… Carminator would come, with the same face, but with a different car. And not necessarily face to face… In my sad experience, he has visited me once too often from… behind.
I was charged in that manner into the rear of my “Christine” as I was fully stopped by traffic. The last thing I saw in my mirror was Carminator entering into the large square with full speed while facing his girlfriend that was sitting next to him… bang!

Another rear “kiss” was on a freeway with my “Dolly”. Fully jammed with traffic we were on a continuous stop and go when a huge truck stopped… on me, practically throwing my car a few meters ahead. Since I always leave an escape-distance* I didn’t crash into the guy ahead of me and I was happy to still have a neck…

Something equal happened with my “Blondie” when I was stopped at a red light and I saw from my mirror a car coming from behind… with no driver?! Bang! The “driver” was fully bent over into his floor, because as he admitted, without force, some papers had fallen out of his hand and he was down reaching for them…

One might argue that I was not careful enough while being stopped (some arguments can drive you up the wall, but what can you do!).
But the thing is that I was careful enough while stopped… I always slow down in a manner to “assist” those behind me by “encouraging” them to cut speed. I leave my “small lights” during daytime on, and I do so from a time when something like that was considered… illegal (nowadays it is becoming mandatory). I was wearing a seatbelt (for crying out loud) at times when all other drivers turned and commented while laughing “this guy wears a seatbelt”. I think that I can brag a little here and say that, as a driver, I always was ahead of my time.
But all this behavior was and still is just a little defense against my meetings with Carminator. So far, so good…

*(Leaving a distance from the car ahead, while you are at stop, which will allow you to evade the car in front of you in one shift overtake. Disadvantage is that some drivers enter this space to overtake you, but I still prefer to have that space “for use” anytime. There are also other things to consider… For instance, once and while I was at full stop, the car in front of me suddenly started to… smoke and soon after it did burst into flames and imagine what?! At the end it did actually explode… When this incident occurred my driving experience was as low as my age was. And it was truly unforgettable trying to maneuver back and forth and left and right and again and again, in order to steer away from this mess…)

His style
You might thing by now that Carminator is a bad person… Evil, twisted, ugly, scar-faced and hunchbacked! Well… guess what?! You are wrong! Despite the odds one should never have prejudice against anything…
Carminator is a happy person, he is good, kind and sometimes extremely beautiful… This is another reason why he is lethal!!!

I was privileged in my life to witness more than once other people’s Carminator… Please allow me to explain, I need your attention here, at the end of the text there might be questions asked!
Each person has his own Carminator… “Your Carminator” is watching over you just like a religious Saint is watching and protecting you. Note: I never liked being watched, but I will not argue with my Saint at this point (…mine is called Simon Templar by the way!) So, where was I?! Ah yes! …saint watching over us. The difference with your personal Carminator is that instead of protecting you he is assigned by the Universe to catch you on, or off guard, and kill you! It’s that simple!
So, seeing another person’s Carminator is a kind of… revelation!

Many years back, and before owning a car myself, I was driving a car for a company I was working for at the time… In front of me was a lady that was driving down the narrow roads of the city with as less speed as possible. She was literally rolling down the road without care, while having a conversation with another lady on her side… It was easy to tell that they were talking because there was a lot of hand and head gesture and little attention to the empty road ahead… It was also easy to tell that they were very beautiful and nicely dressed…
I had to get going and I tried once or twice to overtake them, but regardless of my obvious close approach and intention they seemed to ignore my presence entirely. What I did?! I decided to… roll along down the way, they must have had to turn somewhere… At some point of the rolling there was a green light ahead which turned to yellow and soon after to red. But to my amazement and surprise the lady continued the rolling, the talking and the gestures… In this manner they crossed the intersection and my eyes had become twice their size at this point… The crash was inevitable. Three cars became wreck while colliding to each other and one of them did enter the window of a shop.
Smoke, dust, noise, broken pieces, some injuries and chaos everywhere…
But behold!!! In the far distance down the road the nice lady continued the rolling, the talking and the gestures, completely unaware of what happened…
This is what I call “witnessing another man’s Carminator”.

Another sad story of Carminator’s doings is about killing… a tree!
There was once a tree at a certain road, which connects for thousands of years the city of Elefsina with the city of Athens in Greece. In fact this road would end at the gates of the Parthenon (mostly known as Acropolis of Athens).
Somewhere along the road there was a big olive tree that was actually the tree under which Plato (yes, THE Plato!) used to gather his disciples and teach Philosophy the 5th century B.C.
So, we need many fingers to count the years, because we are talking about a tree which survived for 2.500 years… It had a height of 1meter and 70 centimeters and its “body” weighted over 600 tons!!!
If you have doubts, it now rests at the Agricultural University of Athens for people to see…
In the year 1975 a huge bus rammed it with full speed and killed it!!!

This tree survived anything for 2.500 years…
Imagine fires, earthquakes, floods, droughts, thunderbolts, bombardments, invasions, World Wars, pollution, woodcutters, animals, tree sicknesses and who knows what else!
It did survive everything, but not Carminator…
         
Unavoidable engagements
Statistic numbers say that, taking to account all parameters, it is by now impossible for a driver to totally avoid engaging in at least one car accident, regardless the size of the outcome…
If we would take this up to the Martial point of view, things are as follow: You learn Ukemi (to take a fall) before you learn a technique. The same thing told in a more absolute measure, the Samurai prior of taking up a sword learned to die by their own Tanto (knife).
So, since our involvement in car accidents is only a matter of when, in driving lessons, first lesson should be about to practically understand accident engagements and the huge responsibility behind the steering wheel, towards the surroundings and towards all living beings…

Aikido driving…
I live my life being aware of the possibility that one day Carminator will wait for me at a corner and kill me. And like in a peculiar Zen-like anecdote my response to   something like this is: “I could live with that”
By now, it is too late for him to kill me, maybe also because I have avoided him so many times… Besides, those few stories above are only a very short glimpse of my endless encounters with him… And though I would like to continue to drive-on, I cannot be as selfish and not admit that I have seen the world, have honed my driving skills, have been around and have done some mileage…

So, personally, the worst encounter with Carminator does not lie in him killing me
as much as in me becoming him…

September 11, 2012