I Dig Freeways, Just Not in the Rain

So, Californians are known as fast drivers, who are pro at driving on the freeway. Because, basically, if you want to go anywhere farther than the mailbox, it's more practical to use the freeway. Freeways are basic surface streets for us.

But today I discovered the REAL reason why everyone is pro at driving in California: we never have to drive in anything but perfect (if somewhat hot) weather. Cause today it started raining buckets while I was on the freeway, and suddenly no one knew what to do. Everyone lost all ability to function. 

Now, I learned how to drive in the rain (meaning, I had my first drivers ed session during the entire 3 hours of rain we got in 2006), so I've always considered myself a bit more abled when it came to driving in imclimate weather than the average Californian (which is nothing but BS, but whatever). But this afternoon, even I was disoriented during this sudden micro-burst on the freeway. Suddenly I had anxiety over switching lanes, like whether or not I would be able to switch into the right lane before my exit came up, because suddenly the freeway was no longer a community where we all watch and anticipate the needs of others and work to together to all get to where we're going, but suddenly it's a free-for-all, and dang it, no one's going to let me over!! Is this what everyone else feels on the freeway? No wonder everyone else hates them. That's so stressful. It's like any other aspect of life: you can't just look out for yourself, because nobody is ever going to get anywhere. If you want to progress, or simply make things easier in yourselves, you gotta be looking out for each other, too.

I don't know how to figure the rain into that metaphor, though. Rain just makes things complicated. And wet.

(But yay! One thing Californians love is their rain. ESPECIALLY right now, cause we're going through one terrible drought. One of the worst droughts in our history, if I remember correctly. So bad that even with this predicted Godzilla El Niño, even if we got the max amount of rain, it wouldn't get us out of the drought. That's pretty pathetic, when you think about all the dangerous flash floods and houses crumbling in mud slides and cars floating away... But mostly I think about how the last time the streets were flooded, I was a teenager and apparently Stephanie's friends took their boogie boards and went skim boarding down the streets and towed each other behind cars trying to water ski, and it reminds me that fun can be had even in the oddest of situations.)