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!