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.”