Someone noted to me the other day a profound truth: Anyone who drives faster than you is a maniac and anyone who drives slower is an idiot. After contemplating on this truth for some time, I discovered that there was a great deal of truth involved therein.

How many times do we come upon a vehicle, especially one that pulls out in front of us and then drives slowly, and think, "What an idiot?"

However, when we do the same to someone else, we don't immediately lose all brain capacity.

When people zoom around you on a double line or come up on you going faster than you, it does seem like they are a maniac. But when you come upon the fellow in the slow car pulling out in front of you, we don't think, "I feel like a maniac" as we consider passing him or honking the horn. Well, actually I do think that sometimes.

As a case in point, a few members of my family were riding with me the other day after church to get a bite of food. My father usually asks someone else to drive these days.

I thought it was because he is getting older, but now I think so. The reason he doesn't want to drive may very well be my mother.

As I was driving, my mother's only maniacal idiot son, I was yelled at, punched in the leg, pinched and prayed for. I heard my mother calling to the Savior loudly several times, pleading for divine intervention to aid the demonic forces that govern her son's driving. Of course, being a maniac to my mother can mean going the speed limit.

Every time I prepared to enter an intersection, my mother, who has never had a driver's license, would say things like, "There's one coming. Wait. There's another one. Hold on." After a little bit of that, I started enticing my mother's reactions by asking her if it was clear and then when she said, "No" or "Whoa," I would reply with, "Did you say, GO?"

Then other times I would wonder aloud about approaching tractor trailers, "I think I can beat that one."

She kept her hand near my right leg, the one that controls the gas pedal and brake, prepared to deliver a well-timed punch or pinch, as required by circumstance.

My mother was rather nervous after exiting the car. She finally calmed down after vowing several times to never ride with me again.

My father, on the other hand, was very calm in the back seat, peering out the side glass with a serene look on his face and a large "chaw" of tobacco in his mouth. I suspect he had shut off his hearing aids.

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