Every Tuesday and Thursday, around 16:00, I start getting antsy. Fidgety – good nervous energy. It’s all I can do to not get up from my desk, grab my stuff, head out the door, drive home and get ready to play some football. Before that can happen, I have to send out the final email for the pickup game, make sure there’s no fires to put out at work, pack up my Filco into its protective bag, and grab my murse. Then it’s bounce time.

It seems that very few people understand the meaning of aggressive, defensive driving in the positive sense. It does NOT mean speeding everywhere. It doesn’t mean cutting everyone off or driving up the ass of the person in front of you and it doesn’t mean leaving 3 car lengths between you and the car in front of you at a stop light or in traffic.  It’s fluid and much like a game of football, if you’re playing the striker or winger position. It’s about pacing and change of pace and finding the lanes of access to get to the position you want to get to. You want to avoid fouling the opposition (everyone else) and make no actual contact with them physically and as little as possible verbally or visually. Ultimately, you want to score, or make it to your destination in one piece, without an accident and in decent time.

I work beachside off of 5th Ave and there is fitting punishment for speeding teenage drivers in some place and time filled with the drivers of this town. I’m sure someone sent a bulletin to the residents, telling them about what cars I drive and when I might be getting out of work each day. From the moment I pull out onto 4th Ave, I’m confronted with people that don’t know the basic rules of the road and who don’t know how long or wide their vehicle is or what happens when they push the gas pedal down more than 2 millimeters.

Every day is like a Sunday afternoon for the drivers of Indialantic. Whilst I regard speed limits as suggestions at the lower end of my rate of travel, these people regard it as a suggestion of a variable in an easy math equation where the speed limit X is the amount they subtract between 10 and 15 from. So 35mph equals 22mph. Like synchronized swimmers, they move in unison, each keeping exact pace with their neighbors in traffic, forming a perfect blockade around which no circumnavigation is possible.

Invariably, the stop light at Riverside turns yellow then red.  Like a planned community, leaving Indialantic is limited to one route, unless you want to go further down the beach-side rabbit-hole.  A careful perusal of all the normal Johnny Law hangouts hopefully yields you free and easy travel to and over the bridge.  By the time I’ve reached halfway, I’ve already managed to steer myself skillfully around and past the herd. Now it’s a straight shot to my house.

I grab everything, change and get my boots on. Now, I just have to get to the field. Even though it’s fairly close, it feels like it takes forever and a day. All I want to do is get there and get playing. Even minor annoyances will set me off as I approach. I’m so close I can almost feel the ball connecting with my feet. When will someone invent the ability to instantly travel to the field, in full kit, ready to play? Not soon enough.