The Drive-By

People say you can tell a lot about a person by the kind of car they drive. I say you can tell a lot about a person by the kind of cars they notice. When I first moved to Three Rivers, I remember this guy who swaggered up to me at the bar and said, “I can tell by the sound of the tire squealing on your front left hand side when you turn the corner that you’re going to need to replace your tire soon.”

Wow, I thought to myself, floored, I must be more popular than I thought. People are really paying attention to me.

There’s no question that people read more significance into people’s driving habits in a small town than they do in the city. One time, for instance, many years ago, I was wondering if my boyfriend at the time was cheating on me, so I jumped in his beat-up, old pick-truck and began driving around to see if there were any suspicious looking women waving back at me, thinking that I might be him.

Now, I know I’m not the first person in the world to do this, but there have been times when I’ve also driven around at night or during the day past the house of some guy who I had a crush to see what was going on in his front driveway. If his car was there, it could mean many different things. If his car wasn’t there, it could mean many different things. But, if there was a strange car that I didn’t recognize—(or one that I did recognize)—it probably meant that he had a girlfriend. Of course, there are a lot of things that can be misconstrued by these drive-bys. One time, my dad was visiting me for a couple of weeks one summer, and this woman at the supermarket came up to me and said, “So, who’s your new boyfriend?”

“What new boyfriend?” I said.

“You have a new boyfriend,” she said.

She sounded so sure of herself, that I thought maybe she knew something that I didn’t.

“Well, who is he?” I asked.

“You know who he is, “she said. “He’s that guy who’s been in your driveway all week, working in your yard,” who of course was my dad.

So, these drive-bys can be misleading. But still, I don’t think that stops me or half the people in town from doing them. The thing about drive-bys is that they’re like reconnaissance missions. They can be very dangerous. You go out undercover, hoping no one notices you, drive by your target to get as much information (or misinformation) as you can and pray that you don’t get caught. Drive-bys are actually the equivalent of calling someone you have a crush in and hanging up (back in the days before caller ID).

Of course, there’s a flip side to all of this. It’s possible that someone you’ve been doing drive-bys on might be doing drive-bys on you himself. Normally this would be cause for celebration, knowing the object of your affections is paying attention to you. But then again, you have to be careful about your drive-bys when you find out that your target might be watching out for you just as much as you’re watching out for him.