My brother Jimmy has always been a bit on the extreme side, and I can’t help but feel like it’s becoming worse as he approaches his forties. In particular, he seems to have developed a habit of getting on the highway purely for purposes of riding the speed limit while listening to really loud deep house music. If he doesn’t get a chance to do this almost every day, he starts getting snappy and fidgety. No joke.
Look, it’s not such a bad habit, provided that he drives safely and complies with the road rules. But in all honesty, his car is not up to it. All it’s really good for these days is putting around Brighton. Tyre and auto upkeep be damned – Jimmy refuses to take the old junk bucket for a service, and it’s not getting any more roadworthy.
It’s weird because he seems to be mates with heaps of local car mechanics. Brighton isn’t exactly the big smoke, so I can’t quite figure out where they all fit into the town’s business landscape. Regardless, you’d think they’d keep Jimmy in check about having his car routinely serviced, or at least patched up around the edges, but I can’t see much evidence of that. It’s certainly apparent in the plastic bin bags sticky-taped over one of the rear windows, or the temperamental tail light that occasionally opts to not work.
All that aside, I just don’t know that it’s healthy for Jimmy to be relying so heavily on this one particular method of letting off steam. Couldn’t he go for a walk instead? That’d be so much less dangerous, not to mention carbon neutral. Or he could get himself a hobby – something active and wholesome, like gardening or mountain bike mechanics. Surely, all this high-speed driving must increase his cortisol levels, not lower them. Each to their own, though.