A segment on night driving

Driving at night is one thing that will always fascinate me. Everything is in shadows, so mysterious and a bit thrilling.

Let me start out with a story that will explain the rest of my tale.
A couple of weeks ago Vicki and me were sitting in the backseat of my family's blue minivan as it sped down the highway. It was a rainy day, and we were bored, so we decided to have raindrop races. We've all done that, right? It's a classic. Anyway, we choose our 'jocky' raindrops and watched as they made there way across the window. My raindrop came into the lead, and in that second, the most surprising, horrific thing happened.
It exploded, right on the window, into a thousand tiny droplets. Of course I was traumatized. Why wouldn't be? And of course Vicki laughed at me for the face I made.
Now, on with my tale.
Tonight on the way back from a youth activity and a trip to Walmart, I was sitting in the passenger seat of the said minivan. My mom was driving, and my little brother was in the back seat.
Going past some cornfields(this being minnesota, corn is just part of the landscape) my mom noticed a dense mist hovering above the stalks. She became irritated and said, "See Cody? Those are pesticides right there. They must have just sprayed."
I was actually quite amused at her presumption, seeing as it was 9:30 at night and they usually don't fly biplanes in this whether and lighting. I responded with perfect politeness, as I never have been someone to judge another's irrational train of thought (sorry mom), "No, I think it's fog."
Maybe that was jumping to conclusions. I don't know.
My mom suddenly changed her opinion to match mine. "It's called graveyard fog when it comes in that fast. You never see it coming."
"Wow," I said, "that is a depressing sentiment." Don't get it? Think about it for a minute. You'll catch on.
I ate my own words when we suddenly drove through a small fog bank, the mist so thick that you could butter toast with it. My goofy grin did nothing to mask my utter astonishment. Whoa, it was foggy outside....
Soon I grew bored though and started to stare mindlessly at the bugs that were lit by the headlights as the flew past the window. There were so many bugs in fact that I could not look at all of them, so I just stared straight ahead with that dead look in my eyes. You know, the totally mindless look that says 'breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out'.
Then suddenly a peculiar bug specimen brought me out of my reverie. It seemed to be dancing in the air, a perfect example of a bug, because lets face it; it was a bug.
Right as I was just thinking this, the car shot forward and....
SPLAT!!!
The bug made a sickening thud sound as it hit the windshield, it's body splattered over nearly a square inch of glass. (We were going sixty at the time, so it was no big surprise.)
I sat there in total shock, my mind frozen between a hysterical laugh and horror. Even after several moments, I was undecided in how to react, so didn't at all. On the inside though, I was laughing. Only because of my complete shock though. Another part of my was crying for that happy little bug who likes to dance in headlight beams, and never will again.
While thinking these greatly depressing thoughts, we passed the sign that said the name and population of our town. Such a familiar thing, as we see it every day. But something about it was different.

Windom
Pop. 4490

Soon realization hit me: the last time I had really looked at that sign, it had said 4494.
Ouch.
So yeah, today has been a day of depressing thoughts mixed with comic relief, mixed with that splatter of bug guts on the windshield that will take forever to scrape off.

Later!
-Cody