Road Kill

Mike and the kids will tell you - I am definitely a nervous passenger in the car when Mike is driving. I do trust him and know he has been driving forever, but I am constantly afraid we are going to rear-end someone or run over something or drive off the road. While these fears are (for the most part) unfounded, it certainly doesn't stop me form being ultra-paranoid in certain situations.

Take, for example, our recent drive to Colorado.
It was late at might. I had maybe slept for an hour or two total that night. We were on back roads, winding through the mountains in the pitch black, snow was on the ground, and I was sure that an animal had run across the road in front of our car. Knowing better than to yell out when Mike is driving, I simply (and very innocently I might add) inhaled quickly and braced myself for the collision.

Mike slammed on the brakes and demanded to know what my problem was.

You see, when I react like that, he gets nervous and thinks it's something dangerous. It bugs him, but I truly thought I had seen something run in front of us. I explained this to him and he was less than amused.

You see, what had actually "run" in front of our car was a tumbleweed. Yeah, like the ones in the cartoons on TV. I really thought it was an animal, I tried to explain. He laughed and told me that animals have eyes that glow in the headlights and legs. Tumbleweed has no eyes and no legs. ok, I know that, but still. Is it alright to run anything without eyes and legs over with our car? Pretty much, Mike told me. Besides, he continued, didn't you feel the impact from that weed we just hit?

Har, har, har.
He's such a comedian.
And I ended up being the brunt of the jokes for a while after that.
I guess I deserved it...this time.