Toiletiquette

Banks A Helluva Lot

Banks A Helluva Lot
By Bob Coskrey

Banks, they’re all over the damn place. I counted 30 of them, including savings and loans and credit unions, in the Greater Charleston Area phone book, some of which have as many as 10 branches, and there are new ones springing up on a seemingly daily basis. My God, the competition must be ferocious, assuming they still want to make loans to us high risk, over-mortgaged, Joneses-envying material boys and girls.
I imagine their advertising budgets are quite impressive, though ironically, their efforts are blatantly lacking in creativity. So many of the names sound very much the same, and this is not a recent problem. They will either try to appeal to your city, state, or country loyalty, although state fealty seems to predominate here, with inspiring appellations such as National Bank of S.C., S.C. State credit Union, or Carolina First Bank, but with this state having supplanted Illinois in the area of embarrassing publicity recently, you would think the banks might want to disavow any relationship, or better yet, just incorporate the name of a state whose governor doesn’t require a governor for his “little Governor, whose lieutenant governor doesn’t think giving poor school children free lunches is akin to giving aphrodisiac laced feed to livestock, and where tea parties haven’t become Confederate Flag day celebrations, with middle aged, angry, white guys waxing nostalgic for the “50’s,” the “1850’s,”that is, instead of a social event for little girls.
And why is it that banks all over the country have continued the inane practice of referring to themselves as “first.”: First Citizens, First federal, First national, First Trust, Community First, etc. In the first place ( sorry ), how can all these institutions be first? Well, I guess a bank could possibly claim that it was the first in a specific category, such as the first to offer free candy to customers, the first to install security cameras, or the first to stay open during lunch hours, but this would be hard to confirm, not that anyone would care enough to check them out.
However, banks could take the initiative to establish new and imaginative categories of firsts, such as the first bank to employ a security guard under the age of 75, the first to discontinue the somewhat tedious groundbreaking ribbon-cutting ceremonies for new banks and replace it with an umbilical cord-cutting procedure, medically supervised, of course, for the first proud customer to give birth, or being the first to acknowledge John Dillinger’s birthday by having the tellers wear ski masks ( millinerily incorrect, certainly, but banks are not likely to spring for snap-brim fedoras ) and installing brown paper bag dispensers beneath their windows.
On the other hand, why not take the honesty track and admit your rank by calling yourself 132nd Federal or 27th national, for example, but perhaps, I am asking too much.
Then there are the weird names that make you question the message they are conveying. Such as Wachovia, which sounds like one of those make believe countries in an old Disney film. I’m surprised their security guards are not resplendent in colorful braided uniforms with epaulets, a plumed shako, and packing a sabre.
Then there’s BB&T, a name that might indicate they are in the witness protection program, and who knows whether it could actually stand for Bankruptcy and Breach of Trust.
Then there’s State Farm Bank. Just what does that mean? If I went there to open an account, would there be people dressed in overalls dragging in 300pound pigs for loan payments and tractors lined up at the drive-in windows?
And what’s the story with Carolina Federal Saving?. Are customers there greeted by visored, humorless federal bureaucrats or “Carolina Girl” tellers shagging in a lobby bedecked with sand drifts and swaying palmetto trees?
I guess all I’m really saying is that if you bank people want to stick around, you need to do more than use the stimulus money for your personal aggrandizement or seeing how many banks you can fit into a city block. You also need to put more thought into naming yourselves. Be a little more imaginative, truthful, and less ambivalent. And to show I’m not just here to kick you when your deposits are down, here are a few suggestions to get you started:
Self-deprecating:
Another Damned Bank
The Money Pit
Last National Bank of S.C.
Bank of No Returns
Mountebank
Boastful:
Itz Money In The Bank
Sufficient Funds Are Us
Bucks A Million
Good Credit Union
Big Bucks S&L
Take It To The Bank

TV/Nostalgic:
Bob EuBank
The Loan Ranger
Movies/Nostalgic:
George Bailey S&L
I Vant To Be A Loan Company
Political:
Special Interest Bank
Trust Us
Francophile:
Left Bank
Right Bank
Cubs Friendly:
Ernie Banks And trust
Tar Heel State friendly:
The Outer Banks, Inc.
And I’ll throw in a few slogans to further substantiate my magnanimity:
We turned down the stimulus package. We’re not a sperm bank!
Show us you don’t need a loan and we’ll give you one.
Need a loan? No problem. We’ve got more money than vice presidents.
Goldman Sucks. Invest locally.
Pssst, got a second? Mortgage, that is.
Our talkers can’t stop talking about our excellent interest rates. That’s why we don’t call them tellers any more.
In closing, it seems quite apparent to me that if you are going to be serious about not just renaming, but repackaging yourselves, that I am obviously the one to lead you out of your creative quagmire. So, I invite you to contact me while this offer lasts. However, you should be aware that I only conduct business between the hours of 6:00 and 8:00AM, since I don’t observe bankers’ hours.






















Banks A Helluva Lot
By Bob Coskrey

Banks, they’re all over the damn place. I counted 30 of them, including savings and loans and credit unions, in the Greater Charleston Area phone book, some of which have as many as 10 branches, and there are new ones springing up on a seemingly daily basis. My God, the competition must be ferocious, assuming they still want to make loans to us high risk, over-mortgaged, Joneses-envying material boys and girls.
I imagine their advertising budgets are quite impressive, though ironically, their efforts are blatantly lacking in creativity. So many of the names sound very much the same, and this is not a recent problem. They will either try to appeal to your city, state, or country loyalty, although state fealty seems to predominate here, with inspiring appellations such as National Bank of S.C., S.C. State credit Union, or Carolina First Bank, but with this state having supplanted Illinois in the area of embarrassing publicity recently, you would think the banks might want to disavow any relationship, or better yet, just incorporate the name of a state whose governor doesn’t require a governor for his “little Governor, whose lieutenant governor doesn’t think giving poor school children free lunches is akin to giving aphrodisiac laced feed to livestock, and where tea parties haven’t become Confederate Flag day celebrations, with middle aged, angry, white guys waxing nostalgic for the “50’s,” the “1850’s,”that is, instead of a social event for little girls.
And why is it that banks all over the country have continued the inane practice of referring to themselves as “first.”: First Citizens, First federal, First national, First Trust, Community First, etc. In the first place ( sorry ), how can all these institutions be first? Well, I guess a bank could possibly claim that it was the first in a specific category, such as the first to offer free candy to customers, the first to install security cameras, or the first to stay open during lunch hours, but this would be hard to confirm, not that anyone would care enough to check them out.
However, banks could take the initiative to establish new and imaginative categories of firsts, such as the first bank to employ a security guard under the age of 75, the first to discontinue the somewhat tedious groundbreaking ribbon-cutting ceremonies for new banks and replace it with an umbilical cord-cutting procedure, medically supervised, of course, for the first proud customer to give birth, or being the first to acknowledge John Dillinger’s birthday by having the tellers wear ski masks ( millinerily incorrect, certainly, but banks are not likely to spring for snap-brim fedoras ) and installing brown paper bag dispensers beneath their windows.
On the other hand, why not take the honesty track and admit your rank by calling yourself 132nd Federal or 27th national, for example, but perhaps, I am asking too much.
Then there are the weird names that make you question the message they are conveying. Such as Wachovia, which sounds like one of those make believe countries in an old Disney film. I’m surprised their security guards are not resplendent in colorful braided uniforms with epaulets, a plumed shako, and packing a sabre.
Then there’s BB&T, a name that might indicate they are in the witness protection program, and who knows whether it could actually stand for Bankruptcy and Breach of Trust.
Then there’s State Farm Bank. Just what does that mean? If I went there to open an account, would there be people dressed in overalls dragging in 300pound pigs for loan payments and tractors lined up at the drive-in windows?
And what’s the story with Carolina Federal Saving?. Are customers there greeted by visored, humorless federal bureaucrats or “Carolina Girl” tellers shagging in a lobby bedecked with sand drifts and swaying palmetto trees?
I guess all I’m really saying is that if you bank people want to stick around, you need to do more than use the stimulus money for your personal aggrandizement or seeing how many banks you can fit into a city block. You also need to put more thought into naming yourselves. Be a little more imaginative, truthful, and less ambivalent. And to show I’m not just here to kick you when your deposits are down, here are a few suggestions to get you started:
Self-deprecating:
Another Damned Bank
The Money Pit
Last National Bank of S.C.
Bank of No Returns
Mountebank
Boastful:
Itz Money In The Bank
Sufficient Funds Are Us
Bucks A Million
Good Credit Union
Big Bucks S&L
Take It To The Bank

TV/Nostalgic:
Bob EuBank
The Loan Ranger
Movies/Nostalgic:
George Bailey S&L
I Vant To Be A Loan Company
Political:
Special Interest Bank
Trust Us
Francophile:
Left Bank
Right Bank
Cubs Friendly:
Ernie Banks And trust
Tar Heel State friendly:
The Outer Banks, Inc.
And I’ll throw in a few slogans to further substantiate my magnanimity:
We turned down the stimulus package. We’re not a sperm bank!
Show us you don’t need a loan and we’ll give you one.
Need a loan? No problem. We’ve got more money than vice presidents.
Goldman Sucks. Invest locally.
Pssst, got a second? Mortgage, that is.
Our talkers can’t stop talking about our excellent interest rates. That’s why we don’t call them tellers any more.
In closing, it seems quite apparent to me that if you are going to be serious about not just renaming, but repackaging yourselves, that I am obviously the one to lead you out of your creative quagmire. So, I invite you to contact me while this offer lasts. However, you should be aware that I only conduct business between the hours of 6:00 and 8:00AM, since I don’t observe bankers’ hours.

Christmas Memories

The cinnamon scent of sand-tarts wafted from the kitchen, drifted up the stairs and swirled into my bedroom, rousing my olfactory sensors, and triggering a flashflood of Yuletide adrenalin. Being an 8-year-old trying to get to sleep on Christmas Eve was a difficult enough task in itself without the unprovoked excitation of my sensory and hormonal systems.

Before putting me to bed at 8 pm—with no resistance (I figured the sooner I got to bed the fast I could go to sleep, then wake up on Christmas)—my mother had told me not to get up because Santa Claus might be here at any time, and "he expected all good little boys to be in bed." If I had been more nimble witted, I would have seized this opportunity to retort, "Well, Mama, if it's his policy that only 'good little boys must be in bed,' then obviously that does not apply to someone like myself, whose pyromaniacal feats of the past two years almost resulted in the loss of two homes (ours and a friend's). Therefore, I should be able to stay up." But it's just as well that I hadn't said that, since my older cousin Jimmy certainly would have added, "Sure, Bobby, you can stay up as long as you want. With your record, it's not very likely he'll be paying this house a visit anyway—especially if he doesn't have fire insurance on his sleigh."

But none of that was ever said, and I struggled vainly to try to go to sleep while at the same time, listen for hooves on the roof (reindeers', not Satan's as Jimmy would have wise-cracked), a rustling in the chimney, or any other unusual sound that naturally would be a sign that he was here. I think I finally dozed off around 5 am or so, then awoke around 7 to the sunlight streaming in my window. It was OK to get out of bed at last. It was Christmas!

Of course, I had to wake up my mother and she, in turn, would rouse the other adults (my grandmother and my aunt) and my cousin, Jimmy, who was about 18. This was and is the grown-ups eternal Christmas rule—that no child should even see, much less touch his presents, until all the adults in the house are present. Ostensibly, this restriction was instituted so that the grown-ups could see the expression of joy on our cherubic faces, as we opened the presents. In reality, this restriction is to prevent Christmas Combustion, a seasonal phenomenon in which flames sometimes erupt from wrapping paper, as small fingers rip at it with such speed that friction-generated heat evolves. I once had an entire cardboard fort go up in a flash, and would have lost a Lincoln Log set, had I not received an already filled watergun in my stocking.

I managed to control myself by wolfing down a plate of sandtarts while the disheveled grown-ups snailed their way toward the bountiful living room. Once unleashed into the room, my eyes first lit upon a castle I had written Santa to bring me from the F.A.O. Schwartz catalog. Jimmy had thoughtfully explained to me the impracticality of Santa's elves making toys for all the kids in the world, and that he had worked out some sort of a deal like free advertising endorsements with the department stores. There were also several sets of metal soldiers, British Grenadier Guards, Black Watch, Gordon Highlanders and Greek Evzones. This was mostly what I was interested in in those days, so I was quite happy.

My stocking was, I gradually learned, as much a tribute to family tradition as it was a cornucopia of thoughtful gifts. Many items were the same every year, such as a can of pick-up sticks, jackstones, a bit-bat, a box of Brach's chocolate covered cherries, a top, assorted pieces of fruit (fillers, perhaps?), and always at the toe there were nuts, always the same nuts: a walnut, a pecan, a Brazil nut, an almond and a filbert.

The adults, too, were victims of the annual stocking gifts tradition. Victims, as well as perpetrators. My mother and her sister, for example, filled each other's stocking each year and they both always received, along with the variables, a box of Ex-Lax, a package of emery boards, a box of Dr. Scholl's corn and bunion pads, a bottle of Jergen's lotion and a jar of Pond's skin cream. They, of course, also received chocolate-covered cherries and the fruits and nuts.

From the laughter that always accompanied the revealing of these repetitious stocking stuffers each year, I soon learned that this was an example of family humor. Although every Christmas I grudgingly sniggered at these atypical presents, which I naturally felt were simply occupying valuable sock space, I believe that if the tradition had ever ceased, I would have been seriously concerned.

I had a red stocking and my cousin Jimmy had a green one. My mother's and her sister's were actual long cotton stockings both white with different colored dots. My grandmother, however, had as her stocking a large—probably 20-pound or so capacity—ham bag. Although we all laughed about it, as did my grandmother, it was always a great paradox to me that this sweet, refined and gentle old lady, whom we were all taught to revere, love and treat as a queen, would have as her Christmas stocking, a huge, coarse fabric ham bag from the meat department of the White House Grocery Store on King Street. A brocaded or tapestry patterned one with a ring of ermine around the top would have seemed more fitting. It became, however, less of a paradox four years later when my grandmother further shocked me by becoming an avid fan of TV wrestling. Now she never smashed her knitting bad against the wall and yelled, "Kill the lousy scum!" Her only emotional display was to exclaim, "Oooo, oooo" in a moderate tone whenever her favorite good guy got "hurt." I tried to explain to her that nobody got hurt. It was acting. But she didn't believe me.

Our tree was always bedecked with blue lights and a lot of ornaments that are not made anymore, like small snow-covered houses, manger animals on wheeled stands, delicately-made sheep with cotton that resembled wool, fruit and cornucopias. Some of these items I have managed to save through the years and they reappear on my family's Christmas tree every year. I still have a small wooden puppet from Germany whose limbs flail whenever a sub-torso string is yanked. Nowadays, a similarly-operated Peewee Herman doll might sell in vast quantities.

My favorite ornament, however, is a small, probably 75 to 100 year-old Santa Claus whose upper body appears to be made of some sort of ceramic substance. The end of his nose is nicked off. He has bulbous eyes, and his face is a pinkish red hue, making him look like a heavy drinker. He became sort of a family joke, and every year as he was carefully unwrapped and hung on the tree someone would make the remark that he looked like he had had a stroke. My son never found him, not any of the old worn-out ornaments, amusing. He would always redistribute them to the back of the tree, or sometimes even hide them.

As a child, I was always given the responsibility of putting the tinsel on the tree, and inevitably I was praised—unreservedly, I'm sure—for my contribution. "Ohhh, Bobby, the tree looks so much better now that you have put on the tinsel." I probably did a fair job up to a certain height. After that I had to throw it on, which only created little clumps of silver matter on the upper branches. In fact, I actually continued to think I was doing a great job with the tinsel well into my adult life until my wife finally made me aware of my decorating deficiency:

Barbara: "You're putting the tinsel on in clumps and it's not hanging down, Bob."

Me: "What? This is an outrage. I have been acclaimed as a tinsel artiste by my family since I was 4 years old."

Eventually, after observing some correctly tinseled trees and comparing them with mine, I realized, at age 26, that my credentials were obviously spurious. God only knows what other fake foundations of competence my well-meaning mother and grandmother laid for me.

Me (to Barbara): "What do you mean shoes are supposed to be tied in bows, not knots?"

Anyway, after our first Christmas together, we never used tinsel again.

For Christmas dinner, Uncle Harry, Aunt Lorene and their five children were invited over. We always referred to them as "the thundering herd" because of the noise their 14 feet made on the steps from the street to the porch. There were four boys and a girl. David, the youngest, was my age, then there was Nancy, 9; Frederick, 11; Sandy, 12; and Harry, 14. Of course, Jimmy, my other cousin, was already there. We always had a great time. My grandmother was very diplomatic about giving us presents, meaning sometimes we all got the same things, expect in Nancy's case, of course, or when a large age difference necessitated otherwise.

That year, we (the boys) all got flannel shirts. (Theirs were red, while Jimmy's and mine were Kelly green.) I don't think there was any significance to the assignation of colors, in retrospect. Certainly none of us paid it any attention at the time. In fact, since it was clothing, we gave it little thought at all, preferring to concentrate on the toys. Sandy, Frederick, David and I all received wind-up tanks from our grandmother, the kind with rubber treads and a flint inside the turret cannon that spewed out sparks. We rolled them back and forth all day long, only ceasing when we over-wound the springs.

We had the typical Christmas dinner with turkey, cranberry sauce, etc., expect that the pastries and desserts were always German, since that was my grandmother's heritage. There were strudels, something called Wieckelkucken, and other whose names are no longer retrievable. Of course, there was always the omnipresent fruitcake that some insidious distant relative would make for my grandmother. She was usually the only one who ate it, and perhaps she merely did it out of politeness. In fact, I'm sure that was the case. Its incomprehensible to me that anyone so discriminating in every other quality could enjoy a cake made of mutated fruit and grocery store sweepings.

We also invited a family friend to dinner every year, an elderly lady of French descent, Miss Inez Chapeau. She used to live in the old St. Johns Hotel (now the Mills House). She was a very nice lady, but she had established an apparently well-deserved reputation as a cheapskate, which she, despite having more than adequate funds, glorified by purchasing her wardrobe from a shop called "The Thrifty Lady" or the Salvation Army Store and her Christmas presents from any of the dime stores. I mainly remember her mustachioed, mole-decorated countenance scraping across my cheek or lips after obeying my mother's command, "Give Miss Inez a big kiss, Bobby."

In 1948, it was a special Christmas. We all got to see our "special" aunt, Adele. Aunt Adele was my mother's sister, who was single and lived with her female roommate in Washington, DC. Adele was at the time, in her early 40s. She was about 4'10" and weighed probably under 85 pounds. She had her hair cut very short, wore mannish looking suits and orthopedically-styled low-heeled shoes or blue or white tennis shoes (or easy walkers, as they were called then). She was also—if you have not guessed by now—a lesbian, though none of us kids, nor many of the adults for that matter, knew that term then. We just thought she was a very odd looking and acting person whom we tried to prevent our friends from seeing.

Adele also had a very volatile temper. In fact, all the other grown-ups in the family referred to her as "the Atomic Bomb" because she was always exploding. And she always exploded at a different person each trip home. To make things even more interesting, she also would choose a favorite new nephew or niece (there was only Nancy) every time she came down.

So there was always this almost intangible air of suspense among us with Aunt Adele's arrival. I had once been her favorite when we visited her in Washington one year, but the next two years I had been the victim of her wrath. She always gave us money for a present, I guess because she really didn't have a handle on what kinds of things kids liked.

Actually her explosions were often quite comical, mainly because they were very predictable. As soon as she started drinking—which apparently was while she was on the train—her face gradually grew a deeper crimson and the veins in her forehead got blue. So after she'd been in the kitchen tossing down "shooters" for an hour or so, we knew the blast was imminent. We just didn't know who she'd be aiming at. Even though the other adults would be upset at her tirades, we kids never took them very seriously. She was simply part of our family Christmas pageant, a sort of strident, Grinch-like counterbalance to the occasional Yuletide tendency toward ultra-sentimentality, mawkishness and syrupy over-indulgence.

After dinner, we'd all go over to Uncle Harry's and Aunt Lorene's house. I was always ready for this because I wanted to see what toys they had gotten. And without exception, I would always find at least one thing they got that I didn't and that I—at that moment—wanted really bad. This year, it was a little metal sailor that David had gotten in his stocking. What a covetous little brat I was. It was a fun time at their house, an environment quite different from the more controlled and peaceful ambience of my grandmother's. I was a sort of action-packed Never-Never Land, where I could venture out onto their dock and exercise my childhood right to fall headfirst into the pluff mud (which I did), where I could watch Nancy being pulled up the uncarpeted steps by her ankles, where Uncle Harry's voice occasionally interrupted with a mild complaint, "David, are you and Bobby playing with the ripsaw again?"

Later that night, we'd all pile into the Pontiac and head back across town to my grandmother's. Sometimes Adele would stay at Uncle Harry's, a decision which always pleased me immensely, since I would have friends coming over tomorrow. Aunt Adele always took a lot of explaining.

All the way home and about an hour after I got into bed that night, I thought about that little metal sailor David got. Thank goodness, I had a birthday coming up in two months.

Drive to Work

I’m backing down the driveway. It’s 7:37AM. I look back, not wanting to run over one of the multitude of dogs in our neighborhood, although that giant lab next door, who scares the crap out of me each day as I walk by the fence, roaring like the “Hound of the Baskervilles,” maybe if I just brushed his tail, he would respect me. My God, I don’t mean that, I love dogs, or maybe I just love dogs who love me, and may be that goes for people too. Shut up! Too much introspection for this time of day.

My breakfast of shredded wheat, walnuts, blueberries, bananas, cinnamon, and honey in skim milk, which I naively hope will add a year or two onto my life, probably spent in some Nurse Ratchet run nursing home, is entering digestion mode, as I perfunctorily wave to a neighbor, with whom we no longer associate due to a string of unpleasant experiences. She drives by in one of a fleet of SUV’s on our cul-de-sac. She waves. At this distance, it could be a single digit. Who cares? It would just be a crude exclamation point at the end of our relationship. I wave back.

Before backing out onto the street, I stop to tune in to the “Bob and Tom Show.” I like humor to pervade my life. It seems to make things flow a lot smoother, and I’m a fervent believer that humor exists in everything. Oh, it may not be appropriate always, but it’s there. They’re on break, so I tune in to ESPN to see if the Yankees won. I’m disappointed about 32% of the time. I doubt if Washington National fans are inclined to do this..

I reach the stop sign at the main street in our subdivision and, of course, stop, unlike the person to my right, who simply rolls through. I have noted over the years that about 90% of people think you only have to stop for a stop sign if there is an officer of the law in sight. I don’t know why I felt I had to specify officer of “the law,” as if someone might think I’m referring to an officer of the 81st Airborne, Salvation Army, or the Loyal Order of the Moose. But, as for stop signs, why even waste money on them. Simply have a small one directing cars at all 4 intersections to stop that would pop up on the roof of the police car whenever it came to an intersection. In the absence of the police car, it would be every man for himself, pretty much like it is now.

I arrive at the entrance to the main business thoroughfare that runs in front of our subdivision, where there is a stop light. I get in the right hand lane, since I am turning right onto the thoroughfare. It’s a turn right on red light, but I can’t see what’s coming from my left because the A-Hole in the lane beside me in the aircraft carrier-sized Humvee has pulled out so far, he’s almost under the light itself. This gives him no advantage, since he can’t go till the light turns green anyway. I try to pull out more, but have to stop or risk getting whacked by the endless river of vehicles. While waiting for the light to change, I dream of having one of those giant Sikorsky transport helicopters so I could swoop down and snatch up one of these inconsiderate bastards and set him down in the middle of a Taliban encampment in Afghanistan with Lee Greenwood’s CD, “I’m Proud to be an American,” blaring at maximum volume so he can play out his fantasy in real time.

My dream fades out, as I am finally able to enter the traffic flow. I merge into the far right lane, so when I get on the bridge, I will be in the lane to I-26 West. Seconds later, a car in front of me makes a sudden right turn while simultaneously engaging his turn signal, causing me to brake suddenly and the moron who was following too closely behind me to come to a screeching halt and glare menacingly at me in the rear view mirror. I have observed that around 75% of drivers make these kinds of turns, if they even use their turn signals at all. I’ve wondered if may be they don’t actually realize it’s a safety function, but instead, believe it’s just a way of showing off to people that you’re making a real fancy turn: “ Hey, everybody! Look at me.Yeehaw!”

Today, I seem to be catching practically every red light, and many are caused by people going ten to twenty miles per hour under the speed limit. I have a theory that most of these road slugs simply don’t want to get to their destinations, whether it’s a horrible job, an angry spouse, a funeral, a baby shower, or a Yanni / John Tesh Duet concert. And although these people can certainly be aggravating, they don’t come close to the most egregious of all these motorized malefactors, the red light runners, those Camaro-driving, spoiler- sporting cylinder-heads who simply refuse to stop for a red light. I have a morbid intuition that one of these Darwinian cast-offs will do me in one day. Why? Because I am one of their unfortunate and ill-fated opposites, that small band of drivers who actually stop when the light turns red. It will be my destiny some day that when I stop, one of these people will be right behind me, expecting that I, of course, will run the light too. That is why I always look into the rear view mirror whenever I stop for a red light, hoping, in vain, I can maneuver out of the way, or at least, watch the driver swallow his dangling fuzzy dice or Play Boy key upon impact.

Having avoided or, perhaps, only postponed Death by Camaro, I finally make it to I-26 West and a few minutes later, the South Cosgrove exit, where I prepare to do battle with a long line of vehicles, who are there to challenge my right to exit the highway. It seems that in their world, a person entering a major highway not only has the right-of-way over those trying to exit the highway, but should initiate a game of Chicken till the lesser man backs down and the other is honored later on in some elaborate ceremony at the Summerville Speedway.

I’m onto South Cosgrove now, and I notice the guy in front of me in the 72 Mercury ( often it’s a pick-up) has his bare arm hanging shoulder-length out of the driver’s side window. Only guys do this, so it probably is some kind of macho showboating demonstration, since only guys with “guns’ do it. I have noticed others who drape their right arms over the passenger seat as they drive. I figure they probably have less presentable guns, which resulted in a lack of confidence with females, and finally the sad manifestation of this stressor, pretending they have a date in the seat next to them. In addition, both of these kinds of drivers share an attribute, a penchant for looking more out of the side windows than they do out of the windshield, but not randomly, these are testosterone fueled observations, since I have discerned that they only focus on things such as various kinds of machinery and equipment, e.g., a construction site, road work, a disabled vehicle, a field being plowed, and possibly even spontaneous gunplay, the latter with more avid interest, should they happen to have a gun rack.

I do not pass these Manly Motorists, since I have have discovered that to do so is to issue a challenge to their STP leaking manhoods, which will only lead to trouble and possibly personal head trauma, vehicular or otherwise..

Alas and at last, I am in the final stretch down Magwood Boulevard, and as I approach the turn-off onto my employer’s street I am aware of a car whose driver, at the last second, decides he wants to cut in front of me. He does not have his turn signal on, so he does not meet one of my criteria for letting someone in. Neither does he not meet the other criterion, which is stopping and politely waiting to be let in. I vindictively speed up just enough to not give this transgressor enough room to cut in, and I never make eye contact, sort of like in some books, when a character who kills someone, he never wants to look him in the eye, but I sadistically watch in my rear view mirror, hoping to see his defeated face, though I can’t, as car after car refuses him a place in line. I arrive at work, feeling triumphant, yet mildly self-conscious of my inordinate level of glee. “Whatever!” I had endured the the daily vicissitudes of another drive to work and had managed to squeeze in a minor victory at the end. That hardly ever happens.

Then I notice the car that had been the well-deserved recipient of my rightful revenge pulling into the employee parking lot. I recognize the driver instantly. My supervisor.

Instantly, I have an idea for my next article: “Drive To The Unemployment Office.”