September 24, 2010
Most days I take the bus home. It’s nice to be able to sit back, relax, and let someone else do the driving. Sure, I do have to do a little bit of walking, but the local bus service promises that no matter where you are in the city and no matter where you want to go there’s a bus stop nearby. Their definition of "nearby" is "a minimum of three miles", but that’s another story. At least while I’m on the bus I can do the crossword puzzle, or talk to that guy who always calls me "Lou" and who thinks I was in the Navy. It’s kind of hard to do that while driving. The other day, though, I was driving home, and I either left a few minutes later than usual or a few minutes earlier–not that it matters, because either one will guarantee that I’ll be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. And even though I’d like to get home being stuck in traffic isn’t that bad. Unlike most people, who I’ll see sitting in their cars pounding the steering wheel with their first, I relax, watch joggers go by, watch turtles go by, maybe even, at this time of year, watch the leaves change color. There’s a local hospital that’s put up an electronic billboard with the amount of time you’d have to wait if you were to go to the emergency room. I think it’s supposed to make people feel good about potentially going to the emergency room, but the other day when I was stuck in traffic the wait time was eighty-seven minutes. And that’s not counting the time it would take you to get to the emergency room, which, with the traffic, would take about three days. The only thing I dread while being stuck in traffic is getting a call on my cell phone, partly because I don’t want to talk while driving and I know traffic will start to move as soon as I start talking, but mainly because I’m busy working on a crossword puzzle.
So the other day I was inching along and admiring the two bumper stickers of the car in front of me. One of them said, "I’m proud of my honor student." The other said, "At least I can still smoke in my car", which made me wonder if the driver’s honor student had learned anything in school about secondhand smoke. And as I was moving along I came to a section where the interstate exits onto the road. The people getting off the interstate weren’t holding up traffic–for once there weren’t any boneheads speeding up so they could push their way into traffic then cross four lanes of traffic at once. Everyone was politely waiting their turn, so, being the nice guy that I am, I stopped and waved to let the guy who was on the exit ramp that he could pull out in front of me. And he did, but he didn’t wave back or even look at me. He just pulled out in front of me as though it were his privilege, as though I were just supposed to let him in. Now I’m not prone to road rage, but I felt this serious anger boiling up in me. I screamed, "YOU’RE WELCOME!" but then I realized that, with all his windows closed and his stereo blasting Led Zeppelin’s "Immigrant Song" so loudly I thought it was coming out of my radio he probably couldn’t hear me. I started having crazy thoughts about driving up onto the sidewalk so I could cut him off, but since he was weaving back and forth that didn’t seem like such a good idea. Instead I just decided to do the one thing I could do, which was take a few deep breaths and refocus my attention on my crossword puzzle. Any other course of action probably would have led to me going to the emergency room.
Facebook Comments