A few weeks ago I was waiting at a red light in my Toyota Corolla. My brother has nicknamed it “the egg.” It’s a white car and shaped kind of like an oval. You can see his level of creativity.
Anyway, sitting at a red light is generally pretty exciting for me. Have you ever looked around at a red light? There are people singing (usually me), dancing, having animated conversations, etc.
So, I was impatiently waiting for the green light and then I saw her. I had to look again to be sure. There was no singing, no dancing, no animated conversation.
This girl was changing her clothes. In 5 o’clock traffic.
Shortly after, the light turned green and both of us turned left. I would’ve chosen not to watch her, except she continued to swerve in my lane. After she changed her shirt, she proceeded to change her pants.
Typically, you can’t see someone’s pants in a vehicle, but I watched her lean down below her front windshield (occasionally looking up to check traffic), and a little while later she threw a pair of pants in her backseat. She continued the same actions to put her new pair of pants on.
There are obvious reasons why I was surprised by her decision to change in her car. For example, why would anyone want to change clothes in front of strangers? And how in the world do you change pants and continue to accelerate or, more importantly, brake?
However, there are also other reasons. Safety reasons. As college students, I know we are constantly pressed for time. We often don’t think twice about what we do in our vehicles, because we would like to use that time to get other things done. After all, we’re excellent multi-taskers, right? What we don’t always realize is that our actions affect everyone around us.
Being distracted behind the wheel increases all of our chances of being involved in a serious or deadly crash.
Five years from now, I would like to still be the chick that’s in my “egg.” Not a scrambled yolk.
Please, let’s all keep driving our first priority when we’re behind the wheel.
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