McGinn: I can moisturize and drive just fine, thanks

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer 9:22 AM Friday, August 19, 2011

I’ve given my wife plenty of reason not to trust my interstate driving skills.

There was the time, for instance, when we needed to be clear up in Minneapolis for a wedding rehearsal at 4 in the afternoon, so my grand plan to arrive on time entailed coming home from work the night before and dosing ourselves with Benadryl in order to fall asleep before “Wheel of Fortune.”

Then we’d set the alarm for 1 in the morning and, in theory, leap out of bed and hit the road.

Things were actually unfolding as planned until we got on the west side of Indy, when, with my wife resting peacefully in her antihistamine coma, I decided to keep myself company by turning on NPR.

Thank Jesus for rumble strips.

So each time we embark on a road trip, my wife has come to expect that I’ll at some point play chicken with our lives.

In all honesty, though, the probability of us surviving any given trip is slightly greater with me behind the wheel because my wife’s eyes are so bad that, come dusk, it’s like handing the keys to Stevie Wonder.

Just in case you’re wondering, I didn’t intend to devote the entirety of this week’s column to my driving habits.

It’s just that my erratic behavior behind the wheel at high rates of speed all too often casts a light on a larger issue — the fact that I’m an idiot.

I’m fairly certain I do something idiotic most every day.

I presumably don’t even notice most of my actions, which might actually explain why I didn’t date much in high school.

Rather, it takes me veering into the path of a Freightliner with my wife and child on board for me to be able to take stock of my own idiocy.

On a road trip last week to see family in Iowa, for example, I could sense the fear emanating from the passenger seat when, somewhere in Indiana at a speed of roughly 75 mph, I proclaimed that I was perfectly capable of getting our son situated in the backseat with his chicken nuggets and his chocolate milk.

“Is this going to be like the time you started to put on hand lotion the second we got on the interstate ramp?” my wife wondered.

“What?” I shot back. “My elbows were cracking! You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

I’ll have you know that I’m perfectly capable of multitasking — be it moisturizing or wiping purple crayon off my kid’s mouth or dusting the dash with the emergency Swiffer cloth I store in the glove box — while driving.

The car only wobbles a bit.

But even when my wife drives, you never know when one of my random acts of idiocy will strike, causing the car to narrowly avert property damage.

On this most recent trip, I dozed off in the passenger seat when my wife decided to pull off at a McDonald’s outside Galesburg, Ill. I quietly came to and suddenly pierced the silence in the car.

“Oh my God!” I shrieked as we pulled in.

“What?!” my startled wife shrieked back, quickly grabbing the wheel with both hands as if we were about to ram through a police barricade.

“Ronald McDonald is here!” I exclaimed.

“What?” my wife wondered, noticeably disgusted that I’d announced the presence of a clown with all the urgency of, “My God, look out for that caribou crossing the road!”

“Yeah,” I explained, disgusted myself that she couldn’t just look up and read the big freaking yellow sign.

“It says he’s going to be here today from 11:30 to 1. And it’s almost 11:30.”

Too bad my watch was still set on Eastern time. Regardless, I insisted we wait.

“I’ve been a McDonald’s customer for life, and not once in my 34 years have I met Ronald McDonald,” I argued, making it sound as if I was a kid with some rare kidney disease and a last wish.

As we left — one autographed picture later — my wife texted her sister that we’d all just met Ronald McDonald.

My sister-in-law responded by asking, “Did Andy get to meet the Hamburglar, too?”

Not, “Did my 2-year-old nephew like that?”

But, “Did Andy get to meet the Hamburglar, too?”

The whole family just knows I’m an idiot.

Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.

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