It also seems to me that it is getting worse.

It turns out that it isn’t just my imagination.  While I am becoming old and cranky and less adaptable to the chaos on the roads, there really are more cars out there than when I learned to drive; sixty-seven percent more to be specific.

According to Department of Transportation statistics there were 246 million registered vehicles out of the road in 2009, the latest year for which I was able to find data.  That’s an increase of 99 million since I got my learner’s permit.

Even more problematic is the number of miles those cars are driven each year.  While the length of public roads in the United States has increased only 5.2% in the years I have been driving, vehicle miles traveled has nearly doubled from 1.5 trillion miles in 1977 to almost 3 trillion miles in 2009.  That means that, on average, every single one-mile stretch of road in the country would have 2,070 cars on it each day, but only if all roads were used equally.

We all know that roads are not used equally.  The roads we use every day are the same ones that everyone else is using everyday.  There crowded.  Eighty-four percent more crowded.

I am a numbers girl.  Alas, the numbers cannot tell me where that car came from.  I can tell, though, that they are coming more frequently.

With weather turning colder and darkness falling earlier and holiday travel on the horizon I just wanted to offer a reminder to drive gently.

In one single day, I had several of those interesting “crossing, merging and diverging” encounters.  Leaving my neighborhood while making good speed down one thoroughfare a car rolled through a stop sign and turned right in front of me.  I wasn’t happy, but I couldn’t say I had never done that before myself.  Already on the brakes, I was still unprepared for the offending car to step on their own brakes and turn on their left turn signal; coming to a dead stop in front of me…after cutting it pretty close merging in front of me in the first place.

Just a few miles down the road another car pulled out in front of me.  I know the law says that drivers are allowed to turn right on red in this state.  I know it also says that one may do so only after stopping…and, presumably, ensuring that there is room to do so without impeding crossing traffic.  In this case the did not stop, but I nearly had to in order to avoid a collision.

On my return trip that same day, I watched as the car in the right lane slid over in front of me to make room for merging traffic from the on ramp, only to have the second-in-line car on the on ramp proceedto pass the car ahead of them at the top of the ramp; pulling not into the right hand lane but the middle of three lanes.  Not 30 yards ahead of me, I watched as 4 cars shared the same length of 3 lane highway.

Yikes!

You know I like to grumble, but I’m writing here not just because I wish to complain.  Nor am I pointing out driving errors in others because I am such a good driver myself.  The truth is quite the opposite.  I’m not that great a driver.  One of these days I fear I will fall victim to the insanity on the roads.  Worse yet, it seems likely that I will not be the only victim.

In these three near-accidents, the drivers playing fast and loose with the rules of the road drove a truck, an SUV and a sedan; one was on a cell phone, two were not.  One incident occurred on a busy suburban street, another on a country road and the last, obviously was on the expressway.

The common thread among them?

All three were young women, and all of them had children in the vehicle.

I don’t want to be involved in any accident.  I certainly don’t want anything do with a multi-car wreck.  Moreover, if an accident was inevitable, the last car on earth I would want to hit is the one carrying a mother and her children.

I almost did it, though; three times on one round-trip.

I find myself now, offering a prayer to the universe to protect those blinded to the dangers around them by carpool rules or new schedules or unruly passengers, or whatever else has captured their attention or put them running late.

I hope that you, too, may find a minute or two to offer up your own prayer for the frazzled.

In essence the joke goes like this.

A drunk loses the keys to his house and is looking for them under a lamppost. A policeman comes over and asks what he’s doing.

“I’m looking for my keys” he says. “I lost them over there”.

The policeman looks puzzled. “Then why are you looking for them all the way over here?”

“Because the light is so much better”.

I am struck that, while comically illustrated above, I actually do spend a lot of time looking under that lamppost; in both my personal and professional lives.  I look for identity in how others see me sometimes.  I look for comfort in what I have, not what I need.  I look for answers in the data I have, not necessarily the data that would really clarify the solution.

How about you?

Since blonde is only my chosen but not natural hair color at the moment, I did not take offense.

Even in the days when blonde really was my natural hair color, I would have found it funny… in an absurd kind of way… Just the way it was intended.

I was reminded of an old comedy bit.  I no longer can remember who performed the vaudeville-like routine; probably a Dick Van Dyke or a Donald O’Connor

(yup – I know I am dating myself a bit)

In the routine, a drunk runs into a lamppost, stumbles around for a bit and walks into it again, and again, and again.  In the end, defeated, having walked into a lamppost from every direction, he declares himself surrounded…by a single lamppost.

I was listening to the radio yesterday, though, and heard the report that a family had gotten lost in a corn maze.  Looking at photos online, I did confirm that the maze was significantly more complex than the one in the picture.  It truly was a maze in which one might find oneself lost, but is that really newsworthy?

Well, yes.  It became news when the family called 911.

Seriously.

I get that they had children with them.  I get that the sun was setting, and the operators had shut down the maze for the night (they had not yet left them premises).  I get that frustration had probably gotten the better of them.

I must ask, though, how, exactly, did it become local law enforcement’s job to teach them to walk through the corn to the road and back to their car?  It was a wall of corn, not 12 inches of armor-plate.

In a broader sense, I have to ask, how, in general, we have determined that if we get into something and can’t get out, that it is someone else’s job to fix our mess?  How do start something without a back-up plan?  How do we go straight to municipal emergency services?

Why not call a family member or friend to come honk their horn in the parking lot?  Heaven help us if we actually should owe a favor back in return.  Better to just use taxpayer money.

Why not call the maze operators?  Surely they have a vested interest in the plight of the lost.  Oops, I forgot; 411 is a toll call.  No reason to invest the $1.50 of our own money.

While I have given up worrying that our GPS, MapQuest generation no longer could find north if their lives depended on it, it does seem that even the most citified, device-dependent among us, ought to be able to follow a street light.

It seems I am wrong.

Instead it seems that, even without consumption of mind-altering substances, we are becoming as impaired as the drunk surrounded by a single lamppost; the blonde stuck in a simple maze.

So…even though the topic for today is mazes, I think that, rather than “How do we get out?”, the more important question is “How did we get here?”

I am told to maintain good cardio-vascular health.  Yup.  Fine.  And what good will that do me?

It will prevent the forms of dementia resulting from an oxygen starved brain.

Will it do anything for the kind of dementia to which I am genetically pre-disposed?

Nope.

I get advice to eat healthfully, get plenty of sleep, and limit stress, alcohol intake and blows to the head.  I don’t want to dismiss what is obviously a set of reasonable guidelines for better overall health, but, truth be told, I was looking a little more of an edge.

As a last resort, it seems, there is a well-meaning segment who suggests that I do the crossword puzzle to stave off Alzheimer’s disease.  If asked, I will say those folks are full of baloney.  In my mind, this is the medical equivalent of treating bullet wound to the belly with a shot of whiskey and a dirty rag.  The whiskey might dull the pain and the rag will keep the blood off of the settee, but, for all your efforts, you’ve done nothing to fix the problem.

The crossword advice, like the whiskey and rags, just masks the symptoms.  It doesn’t untangle the plaques.

Throwing caution to the wind, I have embarked on a different path.  Deciding not to mask my symptoms with crossword puzzle wizardry, I have decided to take a different approach.  This morning I tried my hand at the KenKen puzzles that the paper offers.  At first glance, one might think this is right up my alley; number games…math…logic…

Ahh, but that is where you would be wrong.

Instead of gently stimulating your brain and subtly rebuilding alternate neuro-pathways around less effective synapses like crossword puzzling might do, KenKen highlights the severity of your memory loss, punishes you for every minor lapse in concentration, and leaves you reeling from the startling horror of hearing your internal monologue stutter through the list of number combinations to get two numbers between 1 and 6 to add up to 11.

After just a few minutes of “well these two blocks are either a 1 and 4, or a 2 and a 5, unless, of course, it’s a 4 and a 1, or a 5 and a 2, which works if these other three blocks are mostly odd, but only if there is a 6 in the corner, which means that the bottom right is a 1, 3, or 5, but then I can’t use the 5 or the 1 for the first two blocks” I found myself praying that the plaques in my brain were already forming.  That way, I supposed, there would be something, at least, holding my grey matter together.

There is the old phrase “those who can, do”.  For my first efforts, though, I have to say I KenKen not…

Even the beast knows when I am uncertain, or annoyed, or disinterested or, worst of all, offering treats for the sole purpose of luring her nearer the bathtub.

In the Paul Bloom piece from last month, I learned that our perception of someone else’s motivation actually changes how we react to identical stimuli.  Even in the case of electric shock, subjects report that the first shock is incredibly painful, but those who were told that the person pressing the button had no idea that they were shocking someone reported decreasing discomfort.  Those who were told that the person pressing the button was aware that they were, indeed, shocking someone, reported the same or increasing pain levels.

Perceived intent matters.

There are times when I need to manage my own perception of intent.  Occasionally, I need to remind myself that those causing me injury may simply be ignorant of the consequences of their action.  They may be unaware of my presence.  Perhaps they are not in full control of the situation.  Not that ignorance is a great excuse, but at least it makes their actions less of a personal attack, and, therefore, not quite so painful.

I find I need, on occasion to remember that the guy driving slowly in front of me probably is not purposefully trying to make me late.  I try to remember that the guy driving 3 feet from my bumper behind me is probably not a hit man looking for a dark and lonely stretch of road to run me off of, and that he probably is confident that he has left ample distance to accommodate his obviously far superior reaction time.

I tell myself ridiculous fabrications in order to modulate my own reactions.  Perhaps the guy on my bumper has to follow so close because he forgot his eyeglasses.  It doesn’t make me feel any safer, but it prevents the first sparks of anger.

Maybe the driver of the vehicle taking up both lanes ahead of me has spotted some road hazard and has taken it upon himself to save me from some hidden danger.  Yes, that’s probably what it is (now some deep breathing exercises).

You never know what some people are carrying in their cars, I try to remember.  Perhaps some fragile cargo is making them creep down the road.  I know I drive a little differently when the beast is riding along for fear of toppling her over with a sudden stop or sharp turn.  I suspect the trip home from a hospital bringing newborn infants or spine surgery patients is made more gently than the average commute.  I suspect glass sculpture and vials of toxic chemicals are treated to a more comfortable ride than the usual gym bag and groceries.

I tell myself all of these tales because I don’t seem to mind other drivers creating traffic hiccups as much if they have a good reason.  Still, deep down in my heart of hearts, I know these are unlikely postulations.  Deep down I suspect that, on any given, drive, I will encounter idiots.

My faith recently got a little boost though.  This weekend I found myself behind a slow-moving vehicle driving, of course, in the left hand lane, the passing lane.   A slow-moving vehicle with one of those stupid signs in the rear window.  Aye-yi-yi…

The sign said “Wedding Cake On Board”.

So, instead of my instinctual response of horn honking and cursing; or my modulated response of gripping my steering wheel like a vice and lying to myself, I found myself creeping along behind the bakery car musing about wedding festivities.

Because perception matters.

And because I liked the name of the bakers.  The logo on the side of the car told me I had been following the troop from Holy Cannoli Bakery.

I know it.  I have seen it.  Even with Miss Happy Go Wiggly.

If your dog is the sensitive type then the issue is even worse.  It can add to the difficulty of getting through a simple walk in the park.  It certainly adds to the difficulty of getting through the tests for both Canine Good Citizen and Therapy Dog International.

Test-day handlers are frequently nervous.  And the dogs sense that.  Even a confident dog becomes uncertain.  A less confident dog can become a real handful.  When ” SIT” starts to come out “Oh, please dear lord, let my dog SIT just this once”, then it is no longer a command.  It is just the beginning of a long and, probably, very frustrating, negotiation.

I recognize those negotiations.  I saw a few of them go down last Saturday; test day.  I’ve lost many of those negotiations myself.

I lose fewer, now.

Now, I am more confident…or at least I am better able to fake it.  It is a confidence game, a con, that I play with myself; not conning the beast, but conning myself out of my doubts.

Still there are always small bumps in the road.  My drive there was extended a bit by the Thruway closure caused by flooding.  Frequent readers have probably heard me extol the virtues of being on the wrong road going the right direction on occasion.  In the case of this road trip, though, I found myself driving 40 miles due south on the way from New York to Maine.  It doesn’t take a geography major to figure out that due south is dead wrong.  Still the weather was perfect, the roads were good and the scenery was beautiful.

I arrived in time to take over canine management from my host’s daughter, my hosts being away on business for a few days.  How hard could it be, though?  I have, after all, been working as an assistant to my wonderful dog trainer.  I only had to feed and mind two dogs; my curious and energetic beast and my hosts’ oldest; well-trained, but occasionally stubborn.  Piece of cake…or several dozen pieces of salmon jerky… in a pouch attached to my hip… all day long… just in case the beasts needed a reason to come when called.

At first things were fine.  Then the workman arrived.

Wet paint throughout the living room?  I took solace in the fact that my beast sheds considerably less than their beast.  If there was gong to be hair in the walls I knew which dog I was going to lay that one in.

Paint on the dogs?  Well, it was latex ; washable, in theory, and very nearly golden retriever colored.

At one point all four doors to the outside were propped wide open.  One dog bolted for the lake; the other for the road.  No problem.  I had salmon jerky.

And then there was the day they painted the deck.  The beasts and I went for a walk.  A very long walk.

Through it all I was aware that my curious and energetic beast might wander off on me.  I was more worried that she would have one of those “Schiffer moments” and take out the display cabinet of valuable and irreplaceable memorabilia or the ladder the painter was standing on.  My biggest fear, though, was of losing the dog that wasn’t mine.  In the end, it was the thing I didn’t anticipate that caused major heart trouble on my end.

The beast is a fabulous passenger.  Not wanting to leave her alone in a strange home with another dog, when I left the house on errands the beast came with me.  As I expected, she waited patiently while I did a little shopping.  She did her business and happily hopped back in the car when asked.

She was perfect…until we got to the airport.

We were going to pick up another weekend guest.  The airport, being dog-friendly, was the one place I had every intention of bringing her in with me.  She was coming along.  Woo hoo!!  And then she got a little ahead of herself.  The beast never jumps out of the car until she is told to…

Never…

Until that day.  Out of the car.  Out of the parking garage.  Out into traffic.

For the record, this is the kind of situation where you learn how fast your brain processes things.  You also learn how, even with all that processing going on, that you don’t really listen to your brain sometimes.

My brain said “Don’t chase her.  It will only make her run more”.  Some other voice inside me said, “Traffic is more likely to notice if there are two obstacles in their way rather than just one…especially if one of them is a crazed and screaming woman.”

My brain told me to stay calm.  That other voice said “Nope.  This seems like a perfectly reasonably time to freak out to me”.

My brain reminded me that it is Sunday afternoon and traffic will be light.  My brain said the airport compound is mostly fenced and she can’t go that far.  My brain reminded me that she is collared, tagged, licensed and microchipped.  My brain was out-shouted by the other voice that seemed to be locked into a chorus of “f%ck!, f%ck!, f%ck!, f%ck!, f%ck!…”

I just wanted to catch her…and I wanted to kill her.

But you can’t beat a dog for coming back to you…or so my brain says.

(I did, of course, catch her, perfectly unscathed.  I, on the other hand, have used up a few more heartbeats than I had budgeted for the month.)

Today might be more than that, though.

It is an opportunity to remember for those who can no longer thread those memories together.  Go visit that parent, grandparent, uncle, aunt, neighbor.  Bring a photo or a letter or youngster.  Share a memory.  It may not be lasting, but it will be a moment when, while they may not remember, they will know that they are not forgotten.

Let’s remember the army of health care providers that deal everyday with the people who dementia sufferers become.  They deal with the repeated questions.  The alternate realities.  The altered and alterable personalities.  They will do it today, on World Alzheimer’s Day, and they will get up tomorrow and do it again.

Let’s remember those who simply bear witness; who face the loss of a loved one every day.