Ben Robinson

All About Ben

By Ben Robinson

Sunday afternoon, it was time for me to perform my duty by taking my nephew Kevin to work at a local restaurant.

“My duty” is actually rather sarcastic. About three years ago, I injured my arm falling down a flight of stairs and had to let Kevin drive my car back and forth to work for a while. Kevin proceeded to wreck my car one morning by pulling out in front of another car.

Kevin was all right, but the car was totaled. The insurance company, quite understandably, did not want Kevin driving, or attempting to drive, my car any more, and set out to regain the money they had paid me through raising my rates and starting to charge me for two cars I no longer owned.

So Sunday it was either face the weather or take a chance and let Kevin drive my car again. I decided to play it safe and give Kevin a ride.

It wasn’t too bad on the way to Easley. The rain really picked up just before it was time to drop off Kevin, which proves he is kin to me. It always rains harder just at the time for me to get out of the car.

On the way back home, it rained strongly the entire ride. I was in the car by myself, so I tried to keep a conversation going with myself.

“So, I guess the drought is officially over.”

“Where do you think the road is in all these puddles?”

“Hey, look! Animals are already pairing off in twos. I wonder what that means?”

“You know what the good thing about a day like this is? It’s very unlikely there will be a license check set up.”

And then you start thinking the wildest things.

“If I have a wreck and get killed, who will pick up Kevin when he gets off work?”

The thing is that no matter how hard it starts raining, it can always get harder. My windshield wipers just have two speeds (well, three if you include “off” as a speed). So basically at some point I just go from “can’t hardly see” to “I wonder were I’m at now.”

I considered pulling over into the parking lot of Cross Roads Baptist Church to wait the storm out, but I remembered that church had once been destroyed by fire a few years ago. Then I remembered from a few years ago when my church — Nine Forks Baptist — had its gym building destroyed by a tornado. I decided that God could watch over me just as good if I were on the road. I would hate for a church to suffer because I had a sinful attitude.

I continued on my way, trudging along. Finally I got home. I took a few seconds to thank the being responsible for my safety.

Then I fussed at nobody in particular because I would be getting wet as I went into the house.