The text came in at 10:08 p.m.: "Leaving now. Raining a lot." Then nothing for 34 minutes, on a drive that normally takes him 12. I know it was 34 because I watched the clock on the microwave the whole time, and the radar on my phone was a solid block of red and yellow sitting right on top of St. Joseph.
At 10:42 the second text came. "Home. That was intense." Then the Civic's headlights came up the street, slow, and pulled into the driveway, and I went back to pretending I'd been reading.
It was one of those July storms that builds all afternoon in the heat and lets go after dark. Wind, lightning, and rain coming down hard enough that the street in front of our house had water running curb to curb. Garrett had been on a closing shift at the grocery store, which ends by 10. He's been working there since June, so he's driven home in the dark plenty of times. Never in anything like that.
What he did right
I asked him to tell me the whole drive the next morning, over breakfast, when neither of us was keyed up. Here's what he did, in his words more or less, and I wouldn't change much:
- He waited about five minutes inside the store before going out, because the rain was coming sideways across the lot. Good call. Nothing about that drive needed to start sooner.
- Headlights on, low beams. He tried the high beams once and said it was "like driving into a wall of glitter." Correct. In heavy rain, high beams light up the water instead of the road.
- He stayed off the Belt Highway and took the slower streets. Fewer lanes, lower speeds, and he knows them.
- He slowed way down. He said he was going about 25 in places where it's posted 35, and nobody behind him seemed to mind. When the car in front of him threw up spray, he dropped back until he could see.
- Halfway home, the rain got heavy enough that he couldn't see the lane lines. He pulled into a gas station, parked under the canopy, and waited about ten minutes for the worst of it to pass. That's the one that explains the 34 minutes.
- He didn't touch his phone until he was parked. The phone stays in the console. That rule held.
Pulling off to wait it out was the best decision of the night, and it's one adults skip all the time. The roads will still be there in ten minutes.
What he told me later
Two things stuck with me. First, he said the scariest moment wasn't the rain. It was a pickup that passed him on the left, fast, through standing water, and threw a sheet of it across his windshield. For a second or two he couldn't see anything. He said he just held the wheel straight and lifted off the gas, which is exactly what you do. Don't jerk the wheel and don't stomp the brakes. Let it clear.
Second, he said the wipers were "kind of useless." Streaky on the driver's side, with a band right in his line of sight where they just smeared the water around. That one I could fix.
The wipers we replaced the next day
I put a cheap pair of wipers on the Civic in December, the first weekend we had it. Seven months of Missouri, a winter of salt and ice, then a summer of sun on the windshield, and the rubber on the driver's side was cracked and stiff. You could see it if you lifted the blade and looked. Neither of us had.
The next morning we went to the parts store and he picked out a better pair, $34 for both, and put them on himself in the driveway. It took five minutes and one snapped-off fingernail. While we were at it we topped off the washer fluid and wiped the inside of the windshield, which had a film on it that you only notice when headlights hit it at night.
We also added a line to the monthly check that he does on his car with me: lift the wipers, look at the rubber, run a finger along the edge. If it's cracked, chunky or hard, replace it. Wipers are the cheapest safety part on the car and the easiest to forget, because the day you need them is the day it's too late to buy them.
Thirty-four minutes is a long time to watch a microwave clock. I thought about calling him. I didn't, because the phone is in the console for a reason and a ringing phone is the last thing a new driver needs in that rain. When he walked in, wet just from the driveway to the door, I said, "How was it?" and he said, "Intense," and went to bed.
Next morning he was the one who brought up the wipers. I'll take that.