by David Filmore

Many geniuses are “driven,” but I know of only one who is “driving.”

He lives right here in Monterey. His name is Kirby Wheeler, and from a young age, he knew exactly what his mission in life was. To drive a car.

“Oh, he came out of the womb driving,” says his father, “Mr.” Wheeler. “One day he reached out his hands, as though for a steering wheel. My wife and I looked at each other and said, ‘My God.’”

“I’ve never known anybody so in control of his hands,” says driving instructor Sally Pickles. “When he drives, you cannot deny that his hands are on the steering wheel at ten-to-two. Sometimes at six-thirty, but only if he orders his hands to do so.”

A friend, Felton Lyle, recalls a drive they took to the Gilroy Garlic Festival. “I was in awe the whole time. He was clearly at the peak of his powers. It was a heartbreaking drive of staggering genius.”

Little Kirby understood the driving theories of Raoul Stupide at age 7, and by age 10 had finished the French driving philosopher Jean-Paul Moronique’s massive “Driving and Nothingness,” in which he theorized that if one were not driving, neither the car nor the driver could truly be said to exist.

Kirby’s first car was a 1975 Maverick. It was in this Maverick, as a teenager driving to a basketball game, that he invented “breaking the speed limit.” “You have to think outside the box in life,” he says.

“We were going to send him to driving school, but it was clear that there was simply nothing left to teach him,” his mother said.

“Nobody could teach me anything,” he admits.

It was during his “lost years” (he has never learned to read a map) that he formulated his Special and General Theories of Driving. The latter included the now-famous postulate that it was permissible to run a red light if no police were around. “Each trip to the grocery store represents its own set of time and space coordinates,” he wrote. Years later, he is still being proven correct.

Today, as we drive down Lighthouse Avenue, I study his forearms and fingertips. He has long fingers, almost evolutionarily adapted to the demands of clutching a steering wheel. It’s uncanny-almost as though he were born ahead of his time, into a world where nearly every household owned a car.

The muscles in his forearms flex as he adjusts a contraption he calls “the rearview mirror.” “This lets me see what’s going on behind me,” he says. He predicts that one day every car will have one.

Among his accomplishments: changing lanes without signaling, braking at the last possible second, and accelerating through crosswalks, which he theorizes makes the entire community work more efficiently. “Simple math,” he says. “A car can go faster than people can walk.”

His ideas about driving reality continue to evolve. “Car insurance,” he scoffs.

“Completely rooted in superstition. The earliest drivers had this primitive need to pay money to some third party to protect them. It’s a step away from sacrificing a goat to the gods.”

So wrapped up in theorizing is he that he cannot find time to get patents on some of his other driving inventions: parking across spaces instead of within them. Chatting on his cell phone while driving. “You know eating while driving? I invented that. Now you see it everywhere, but what are you going to do?”

How does he respond to critics who say his ideas are making the roads of America less safe? “The concept of ‘avoiding an accident’ is not one that has ever really set well with me,” he says. “Some of my greatest insights have happened after a wreck.”

It was after a wreck on Alvarado that he understood the meaninglessness and stupidity of his own existence. It was after a wreck on Del Monte that the concept of insurance began to make sense. “You can’t live in a world impractically,” he famously intoned to the arresting officer. (“These handcuffs hurt” remains one of his most staggering insights.)

He teaches Driving Theory at MPC and sometimes is even understood. “He has a definite passion for his subject,” student Tara Keith says. “When he drones on and on and on about Nothingness, you start to really understand the concept.”

Asked where he gets his best ideas, he says, of course, “while driving.” “Sometimes I drive with my knees while writing theories and postulates,” he says. Asked why he doesn’t just use a tape recorder to record his thoughts instead, he stares blankly.

What does the future hold for him? He wants to petition for a nationwide change of green lights to red and red lights to green. “Red is fiery, it obviously means to go. Green is peaceful, it obviously means to stop.”

He also wants to do some consulting work for the Highway Commission. “It isn’t hard to enforce the speed limit,” he avers. “Install surprise speed bumps on freeways. Move them around like golf groundskeepers move holes on greens. Invent a car that explodes at 56. I mean, it’s not hard, people.”

At a residential intersection he comes to a complete stop, even though nobody is coming-another undeniable stroke of genius.

“Sometimes,” he says, “I feel I am not part of this world.”

©2009 David Filmore