My hatred for driving, specifically in South Florida, began when Honeybun was a tiny little thing. I went back to work when she was only 6 weeks old and by the time she was 6 months I was working at 4 different places (1 childcare job, 3 teaching dance). Each job was 20-40 minutes from home and 20-40 minutes from one another. Some days were easy where I would go to my childcare job in the morning then home for the afternoon and to the dance studio to teach for 1 hour. Other days I worked the childcare job, went home for lunch, took Honeybun back to the childcare center, taught 2 hours of dance with an hour break in the middle then went straight to another studio and taught another hour. I found myself stuck in my car for hours some days and was sometimes driving over an hour roundtrip for 1 hour of work.
When Honeybun was 18 months we moved to Dublin and chose not to get a car. We were less than a 10 minute walk to the train that ran straight into town, about 10 minutes to our little village with a decent grocery store, pharmacies and restaurants and no more than a 15 minute walk to one of many bus stops that would take us nearly anywhere we needed to go. Except for the few times it down poured on us or when I had to walk 2+ miles to get places because the bus schedules were off, I really enjoyed not having a car. Not having to put kids in and out of car seats, not having to remember to fill with gas, not having to worry about parallel parking while driving on the wrong side on streets where the tiniest of cars barely fit. We would load up the buggy and off we went. There were no arguments about getting back into their seats when we were ready to come home because they never had to get out in the first place!
When we decided to relocate back to Florida, the number one criteria for me in choosing a new home was location. I didn’t want to have to drive every day, I wanted things within walking distance and I wanted to feel safe walking. There are very few areas in South Florida where you can have this luxury, but we were able to find a great one. I’m less than 10 minutes to a Super Target, tons of restaurants, a pharmacy and Honeybun’s preschool is only about 12 minutes walking. Walking here is not as nice as in Dublin and I have to be very careful with my girls as right turners often do not check the crosswalks and we have had many times where if I hadn’t been paying attention we would have been “smushed flat like a pancake” as Honeybun would put it. But, for the most part, we have been able to continue our pedestrian lifestyle. Even when I do take the car it’s rarely more than a few miles each way as we have most everything we need in our neighborhood and I’ve even had times when my car hasn’t moved for a week (unfortunately resulting more than once in a car that didn’t want to start).
I use my car as little as possible because I hate the drivers here and am trying to shield my kids from the inappropriate behaviors driving brings out in me. A few examples:
–Before we moved to Dublin Honeybun got in the habit of repeating some of my often used car slogans such as “What are you doing?” and “Beep Beep, get out of the way!”
–Every time a car honks, Honeybun (and now sometimes Sugarplum) asks “Who’s Honking at us?” and I usually have to admit it’s me.
–Yesterday while driving out of a parking lot, a car failed to stop at a stop sign when I had the right of way so I honked. The guy actually stopped when he got next to me and flipped me off and honked back, I was very thankful in that moment for his very darkly tinted windows and the fact my girls did not notice his actions.
–After honking at someone one night and explaining to Honeybun he had done something not very smart and almost made us miss the light she replied “Mommy, maybe we should go back to Dublin. People are nicer to you there.”
