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Sassy with Cassie: Driving is the sportsball of adulthood

The Fort Collins area was hit hard this past weekend, leaving the drivers left on the road to find their way through the white-will of snow in a panicked crawl. There is nothing quite like a massive snowstorm to clear the roads, and remind me of how much I hate driving.

I was bad at sports as a kid in a similar way that I am bad at driving as an adult. I did not want to do either, but I had to, unfortunately for anyone and everyone around me.

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Driving has never been my forte. Track was never my forte either. The two are more similar than you think.

When I run, I’m really slow. When I drive, I’m really slow.

If I run when no one’s around, I seem pretty athletic. But when other runners begin to run in circles next to me, I lag about a hundred yards behind.

When I first started driving on country roads, I felt confident. But as soon as other cars came around, it became clear that I was an entirely incompetent driver.

I have done the normal bad-driver stuff, such as running red lights, hitting parked cars and parking like a nincompoop. Driving in the snow is a whole, new ball game.

It’s like in track when they started setting out hurdles. I thought the coaches were just mocking me as I slowed to a nearly complete stop, before launching myself lamely over the hurdles and coming in dead last.

Speaking of dead last, I once got 198th place out of 200 at a swim meet. That’s related, because I had to get from point A to point B without nailing anyone else in the mouth with my backstroke.

And they throw in the obstacle of water to watch me flail around laps behind everyone like a moron. Sports were embarrassing, but I did them because my parents made me.

Driving is like the sportsball of the adult world. I’m bad at it, and society still makes me do it.

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Until I encounter snowstorms like the one last weekend, I can usually fair pretty well, and go generally unnoticed, except for the occasional person passing me while flipping the bird.

I sincerely hope a lot of you were not out in the storm. Bad weather is to driving as hurdles are to track. I merged lanes and cut someone off without a blinker, because I could not see in the snow.

The only thing that brought me comfort in whiteout conditions was the fact that everyone instantly becomes an absolutely horrid driver.

Most drive 10 miles under the speed limit, become horrible at stopping and live in a constant state of anxiety.

I then begin to feel like these people understand how I feel on a regular basis. And that brings me comfort. But only briefly, because there’s a white-wall 10 feet in front of me, and that makes me want to cry. Like how I cried into my goggles during swimming, therefore obstructing my vision.

The positive: I can park how I normally do, blame the snow and avoid tickets entirely.

Collegian A&E Columnist Cassie Maack can be reached at entertainment@collegian.com or on Twitter @maackcl.

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