It’s raining. Hard rain. Old Testament rain. I’m driving and I cannot hear my truck radio over the roaring water on my windshield.
This is what our local meteorologists calls “overcast with 10 percent chance of some precipitation.”
This is definitely “some precipitation.” This is what we in West Florida call a frog choker.
I am wearing my nautical-yellow rain slicker. Water drips from my hat brim like someone recently emptied a mop bucket onto my head.
My dog sits in the passenger seat beside me. Her head follows the windshield wipers. Left. Right. Left… I don’t know how she doesn’t pull a neck muscle.
We are caught in a ridiculous traffic jam. There is a major gas shortage in Florida, which is causing a gasoline panic. Everyone is hitting the highways in search of filling stations, draining the gasoline supply.
All our local gas stations have gone belly up. I’ve tried six different stations this morning. Bupkis.
Throw in “some precipitation,” and you get the slowest moving gridlock known to civilized man.
In traffic like this it will
take me 14 hours to get to the supermarket; 23 hours to get to the post office; and I might as well forget going to PetSmart. Which is where I was going.
Now traffic is moving again. Hallelujah. I’m driving at a pretty good clip when suddenly...
I slam my brakes.
Tires screech. My truck fishtails.
There is a guy is running across the highway in front of me. And I’m caught in a skid, braced for ultimate disaster.
The young man is holding up both hands, screaming at traffic. I can read his lips. “Stop!”
Thank God my truck does.
The kid jogs across a slick highway, through the booming rain. Cars slide to a halt. This boy is out of his mind, he just came scarily close to becoming a full-time harp player.
Car horns blare behind me. All-weather…