Saturday morning I found myself on the road minutes after the area had taken the brunt of the weekend storms.  An SUV was directly in front of me, headed northbound as I was, and in the far right lane of four-lane Crawford Avenue.

The lane the SUV was driving in had several large puddles but nothing that looked too deep.  Along the unflooded stretches of the road were clumps of mud. I watched as the driver of the SUV charted a zigzag course right in front of me, trying to avoid the puddles and mud for the length of the entire block.  I wasn’t about to try and pass them as they swerved periodically into my lane.

Then it occurred to me.  Isn’t one reason why you get an SUV so you can glide right through–and over–obstacles without so much as a second thought?  Hey, I’ve seen the commercials and you have, too. They’re doing things like ascending sand dunes and fording streams, for crying out loud–things I wouldn’t even dream of doing in my sedan.  And, as for being afraid of a little mud, I was just at a car dealership the other day where they had an SUV which was actually caked in mud from top to bottom on display in their showroom.

I’m not one of those who hates SUVs.  Most of the time the person behind the wheel can be much more annoying.  This was obviously a case where the driver had lost sight of the “S” and “U” aspect of their vehicle, whereas I, in my plain old “V,” was the one who should have been swerving like mad around the hazards in the road.