Introduction
My disdain for minivans is growing. Rapidly. It’s growing because I’ve found that minivans don’t move. Rapidly. They putz along and take their time, driving well below the marked speed limit, sending my level of patience through the floor and my blood pressure through the roof. I hate to generalize and categorize and patronize all minivans, but the evidence is overwhelming: minivans are slow.

Story the First
Driving home from Grand Rapids on Saturday, I estimated that on a normal day, I’d arrive at my house by 3:15pm. However, this day I set a goal for myself: get home by 3. That’s a whole 15 minutes shaved off an hour and a half drive, so I’d obviously have to increase my average speed. And I’d already wasted a good twenty minutes of drive time before I set this goal. Also, I didn’t want a ticket, so I had to be sly about my increased speed. And I was. I made it to Jackson by 2:50, giving me 10 minutes to drive through town and pull into my driveway. No problem.

All was going well until the white minivan pulled out in front of me. The White Minivan of Incredibly Slow Speeds made no apologetic hand gesture through the back window, it just drove along. At incredibly slow speeds I might add. The route to my house is direct, one road straight through town. There are no shortcuts, so I was at the mercy of the WMISS as long as it drove straight. As the WMISS crawled down the street that I was forced to be on, I watched the minutes tick by, closer and closer to 3:00. We suprisingly made every green light, but that didn’t encourage the WMISS, which continued to inch down the road despite the absence of traffic in front of it. I was a prisoner on the road with no possible escape and a death sentence at 3pm.

Miles passed by slowly as minutes flew by swiftly. I had begun to give up hope of reaching my goal when suddenly! Suddenly the WMISS’s brake lights gleamed, its indicator flashed, and it slowed to a near stop in the middle of the road. WMISS was turning! It was only 2:59, there was still a chance! I flew past WMISS just as the clock turned to 3:00, I had sixty seconds to pull into my driveway. I ignored all speed limit signs and crossing pedestrians, my sights set only on that road up ahead, the one I lived on. I turned and saw my driveway. The clock still said 3:00, I was going to make it!

A second before my tires connected with the driveway, the clock changed. 3:01. I had failed. And do you know whose fault it is? Of course you do.

Beware of the WMISS.

Story the Second
I had just left the incredibly slow Arby’s drive-thru with my Marketfresh sandwich in tow, eager to get it home and into my belly, and I was driving down the same road I had taken on Saturday. This time I made it half-way home in peaceful, just above the speed limit, fashion before the Silver Minivan of Agonizinly Slow Speeds pulled out in front of me. The SMASS, obviously lost or perhaps terrified of speeds above 20 mph, held me as its prisoner until one light before my house. There it turned off and allowed me to continue home in my peaceful, just above the speed limit, fashion.

I ate my sandwich and drank my water, then Brad and I decided we needed to run to the store. Off we went, heading in the opposite direction of where I had just come. Suddenly we catch up to a silver minivan, strikingly similar to the SMASS. Wait. Hon, what does their license plate say? (He doesn’t ride the asses of slow minivans the way I do, so I couldn’t see it clearly. He also has eagle eyes, so he easily read it to me.) AEL… I cut him off. AEL! That’s it, that’s the same minivan. That is the SMASS! Do you mind speeding up and smashing into it violently please?

He declined, and we had to follow the SMASS for what seemed like hundreds. of. agonizingly. long. miles.

Conclusion
Please don’t ever let me own a minivan.