Bardolph's Theorem

Note: This is more sarcasm and satire than true comedy, but I hope it makes you laugh.

         Every once in a while, someone hits upon a simple theory that explains part of the vast and mysterious workings of our world. Newton pondered gravity; Einstein wondered about relativity; Stephen Hawking takes a keen interest in cosmology.

         I just drive.

         My daily commute is twenty-five miles one way, but that doesn’t count dropping off my girlfriend, which is ten miles to her job and ten miles back to my house so I can get ready for my job. In all, on a day when she and I are both working, I end up driving seventy miles.

         Thank God I get thirty-two to the gallon.

         I’ve seen bad drivers, slow drivers, sleepy drivers, crazed drivers, mediocre drivers, and that rarest of the rare, courteous drivers. I’ve seen a Dodge Neon cut off an eighteen-wheeler with less than two feet to spare, and I’ve seen an SUV go sliding out of control on a wet road and waltz drunkenly across three lanes before coming to rest against the concrete barrier. I’ve seen people stop at yield signs and drive through red lights. I’ve even seen a guy on a motorcycle wave politely at me and let me merge in front of him.

         In all this driving, I’ve formulated certain theories about drivers in general. The basic one (which, if you drive, you’ve discovered yourself) is that everyone else is out to get me. Crash into my car, squeeze me off the road, force me to miss my exit, and rock my poor little Escort on its wheels as they fly by at thirty miles over the speed limit. But my favorite, the one which will eventually be known as Bardolph’s Theorem, is a simple statement which specifically applies to Florida, my home state.

         The Sunshine State, right? Fooled you. We have more thunderstorms than any other state, and let’s not talk about hurricanes, okay? There’s a lot of rain in Florida. Little spitting rain that falls too slow and makes even the lowest setting on your wipers squeal on bare glass. Normal rain that’s really dangerous in the first few minutes because it lifts all the oil off the road in a perfect recipe for hydroplaning. And terrible thundering deluges of rain, like a bathtub upended on your windshield every second; rain that clips visibility down to ten feet and makes you feel as if you’re driving through a foot of water, which you probably are, because our drainage sucks, too.

         And instead of driving more slowly, more cautiously, people get scared by the rain, and they go faster, trying to get off the road sooner. That usually works, although by ‘off the road’ most of them don’t mean ‘upside down in a ditch’ so it doesn’t work out as they intended. There are always more wrecks during a storm, and more recklessness too, as if something about bad weather compels people to show off. “Look, Ma, no hands! No visibility either!” CRUNCH. “No fender, either!”

         All of which leads us to Bardolph’s Theorem: Every rain drop that falls from the sky sucks an IQ point off of a driver below.

         Stop laughing. I’m serious.

         How else can you explain the Camaro doing ninety miles an hour, a huge rooster tail of water flying up behind his car, when he can’t even see thirty feet? Of course he comes up on a big van, trundling along at two mph and peering nervously out the windshield. So the van driver (another example of Bardolph’s Theorem at work) realizes he’s about to be rear-ended, and using all of his mental faculties, slams on his brakes. The Camaro swerves, loses control, and if he’s lucky ends up with a totaled car and a lot of points on his license.

         If that hasn’t convinced you, take the woman who was driving a subcompact (it looked like a Kia in the photos, but I couldn’t really tell) who encountered a flooded street. Bending the force of her mighty intellect to the problem, she ultimately decided to drive on through. The outcome? She swam back to high ground while her car bubbled and sputtered in six feet of water.

         There are a thousand anecdotes to support my theory, a thousand expressions of slack-jawed surprise as ordinary drivers find themselves in extraordinary situations. A sports coupe caught under a flatbed. A pickup driving the wrong way up the exit ramp. An elderly Cadillac cruising gracefully along the waterlogged shoulder. And hundreds of cars slammed together, joined at the bumpers like mating lovebugs by one driver going incredibly slowly because of the rain, and another zipping along to get out from under the storm.

         So the next time you visit Florida, and the sky darkens, and the first spatters fall onto your windshield, remember Bardolph’s Theorem! All the drivers around you, the speeding, the bad, the sleepy, the makeup-applying, are becoming more dangerous by the second. Take care, and watch out.

         After all, it’s everyone else who’s a bad driver, everyone else who’s out to get you. My theorem doesn’t apply to you. Like every one of us in our minds, you are a perfect driver.