My wife used to be afraid of bugs. True. Once, when we were dating, she called me up to come to her house to kill a spider. (Don't tell the PETA people!) So I went and did the deed, becoming a hero in her eyes, I think.

Then, when she was a travel agent, she took the opportunity to travel to the Amazon Basin with a bunch of other travel agents, and there, she had an epiphany. For what does the Amazon Basin have in sweet abundance? Bugs. Lots of bugs.

When she came home, my wife reported that when she was in a hut near the river, there were some ... large bugs.

“There were flying bugs in the hut that were as big as some small birds,” she said, excitedly. “And when I killed one that was on the door, it hit the floor with a whoomp!”

After that, no ordinary bug back home seemed to amount to much to her. It was a real case of immersion therapy for her. And it worked. Her fear was eradicated.

I think something like that has happened here.

You see, my wife used to ... comment on my driving habits, the way that wives comment on their husband's perceived failings. I would be driving along at something around the speed limit, and I would come upon some slowpoke doing the speed limit, and I would start to zip around him on a two-lane road, and my wife would gasp and grab the handle above her seat. (My mother calls them the “Oh, God” handles as in, “Oh, God, please slow down!” Or something.)

“Whoa, whoa, Bobby Joe!” the wife would say. (And, as you can see, that's not close to my name. Poor dear was really confused, it seems, by the danger of the moment.)

And whenever a car would begin to start out into the highway as I approached, she would draw in her breath and make a sound like someone on a respirator.

“Be careful!” she would shout. “Do you see that car?”

It always made me agitated.

“Of course I see that car,” I would say through clenched teeth.

Driving over here in the UAE, however, has improved my wife's temperament, it seems. Now she urges me to speed up when I approach a stop sign.

“Go on!” she says, “Get out there!”

Now my driving is ... creative, in the way that jazz is creative. It's based on some sound practices, but it's modified in ways that aren't considered correct by people who actually follow the “law.”

I mean, I cut through lots to get to the next road quicker, take right turns from the far left lane, and vice versa, and generally take chances that I would never do back in America. And the wife? Not a single word of rebuke. Like the immersion therapy she went through with the Amazon bugs, driving in the UAE seems to have persuaded her that I'm not such a bad driver after all. I mean, as unconventional as my driving has become, it's not like I've been driving on the sidewalks or something!

(Actually, I take that back. I have been driving on sidewalks. Kinda fun, too. Not as much fun as driving on your neighbor's lawn, but fun nonetheless. The odd thing is, nobody seems to think it unusual when you're driving on a sidewalk. They just walk out of your way. And nobody ever gets mad if you do something that Americans would consider bad form in driving. The only time they honk the horn is when – or just before – the light turns green. They've got some mighty important tea to drink somewhere, and they cannot wait one second too long!)

So I'm thinking that when we get back to America, my wife's stress level will drop considerably when I'm driving. See, something good can come out of any time of trial!

I'm warning you all right now: when I return home in May, June or July, you'd be better off, safer for sure, if you don't get near me when I'm driving. The problem? I've started driving like a UAE local, and that's not good.

Absolutely true story: the other day I was at a stop light – which, to their credit, locals actually pay attention to – and I was in the middle lane of three. One was for a left turn, one to go straight, and the other to take a right turn. When the light turned green – several of the stop lights count down from red to yellow to green, just like at the drag strip – the first car in the left turn lane turned right, instead, across two other lanes of traffic. About an hour later, I again was at a stop light, and the same thing happened in reverse. This time a car in the right turn lane went across the other two lanes to turn left.

Now here's the odd thing. No-one blew their horn, screeched their brakes, shook their fist at the transgressors. In Northern Virginia, this may have caused two cases of road rage, but here, it was just another day in traffic in the UAE, where you expect the unexpected.

I mean, in addition to all the crazy drivers here, there are goats wandering around, in or near the highways, people on bikes, barefooted kids – and we're talking younger than 12 – driving ATVs in traffic, drivers going to wrong way on one-way streets. Don't come here if you like your traffic neat and tidy, because “neat” and “tidy” are two words that don't apply to anything in the UAE.

The fact is, I wasn't upset, either. In fact, I've been driving like that myself. I mean, I don't drive on the sidewalks or anything, and I do stop for red lights, but that's about it, as far as cautious driving goes.

Now I'm looking at stop signs like they're yield signs, and yield signs like they're not there at all. I don't know what the speed limits are, and I really don't care. There are people driving a whole lot faster than I do, so the cops – whom I've never seen pull over one person – will be after them before me, anyway.

I slide into a lane from the another lane and jump right out in front of other cars at a corner when they don't get going fast enough for me. My wife gave me what I took as a compliment the other day. Watching as I gunned the car away from a turn to beat the oncoming lane of traffic, and then weaved into a tight spot one lane over, she said, “Well, you certainly have adapted to traffic here.” I think that's a compliment.

In any case, I think that I'll have to be retrained when I get back to Virginia. No more driving 90 or 100 mph. No more sliding through stop signs. No more right turns from the left turn lane. No more squeezing into a spot that really isn't there. It's going to be difficult to waylay my new habits for the dull, old, safe driving practices that I followed for about four decades. Might take weeks for me to change back, so, remember, forewarned is forearmed. If you see me coming at you in the summer, duck! No telling what I might do.