I'll spank you so hard!

Excerpt from Michael W. Freeman, The Reporter Editor at TheLedger.com

I never quite thought the man sitting next to me in his car would fume and hollow, “I'll spank you so hard!”


I was sitting next to my friend, who I'll call “Rob,” as we were driving back home from the Gainesville area. And it's awfully strange, even after about three hours of driving together, to hear something like that when, like me, you're 47 years old. I don't think I've actually heard that threat for close to 40 years. And the last person to tell me that, my own father, now is more likely to ask me to speak louder into the phone while he adjusts his hearing aid than anything else.

So what brought this on? Me placing my hand against his dashboard.

If you find that confusing, let me just say I'm never so bewildered myself than at figuring out what little things set people off -- and makes them so, so angry.

And what made Rob explode was my repeated insistence on raising my right hand and placing it firmly against the dashboard, as if to brace myself for a possible crash. Quite simply, when I do that it drives him nuts.

So why do I do it? Well, I'd say it starts with him reading email messages on his cell phone while he's driving – or glancing off at something in the distance while behind the wheel. Or maybe, just maybe, it's the way Rob goes speeding toward the cars in front of him – including the ones that have slowed down for heavy traffic or, dare I say it, come to a complete halt at one of those pesky traffic lights – and stopping with just enough room to fit a piece of dental floss between each car. Usually that jolts me awake, gets my heart pounding, prompts me to offer up comments like, “Well, that was terrifying,” and, yes, to put my hand against the dashboard to brace myself for the sorry crash to come.

And Rob hates, hates, hates it when I do that.

“I'm not going to crash into that car,” he fumes. And then he gets even testier, and tells me if I do that again, if I brace myself for possible death one more time ….

And yes, I did it one more time. And that's when he made it clear to me: “I'll spank you so hard.”

Now, Rob is only about three years older than me, but he's considerably bigger than I am, so I had to pause for a moment and ponder whether or not to take him seriously. I suppose I took him just seriously enough to switch to a new tactic as we barreled toward the next car: closing my eyes and praying. It seemed to work better.

Click here to read the complete article by MICHAEL W. FREEMAN from The Ledger.com