If riding the bus is like traveling in a parallel universe, then riding in your car is akin to attending a court ordered anger management class while strapped in a 4,000 pound metal block on wheels with the windows locked shut on a humid evening after working 18 hours straight as a telemarketer peddling dental supplies to deaf mutes…and you are the only participant!
What I love about the automobile is that it’s like disturbed magician – it can turn my docile Aunt Edna into a raging homicidal denture donning Gerontion maniac (Holy shit I’ve outdone myself with this sentence!). I could cuss up and down her cabbage smelling kitchen, pull the tail of each and every one of her thirteen kittys, chew tobacco and spit all over her faux Persian rug, and bite her ankle (only once, for the record…she shouldn’t have tried to stick that tube down my throat to fill me up with cod liver oil!), and the only discernable reaction I could elicit was moth ball tinged sigh. But get her behind the wheel of her GMC Gremlin and her hidden trucker’s vocabulary is unleashed on all the unwitting teen drivers who innocently wandered in her path, be it dirt road, highway or sidewalk.
Time for my signature non sequitur. Of all the people and animals, of all the animal like people, of all the mundane and bizarre topics against which yours truly has verbally trespassed, two in particular have generated disproportionately lively and heated debate: driving habits and breakfast cereal. Speed Racer vs. Count Chocula! OK. Time to get back in gear (I am so sorry for this putrid paronomasia).
Since it’s impossible to talk about driving without discussing the serpentine network of roads that allow maniacs to motor over amber waves of grain, majestic purple mountains, speed bumps and whinos, it behooves me to document some of the more provocative features of our roadway system. When The Captain wrote about riding the bus, he had no idea his little foray into vehicular traffic would create such a firestorm of email exchanges on company time. The lion’s share of the vitriol was reserved for that oddity of the road: the Rotary, sometimes referred to as a traffic circle or roundabout. If you think the Red Sox - Yankees rivalry inspires hatred and loathing between the New England border states of Connecticut and Massachusetts, then ask a friendly Nutmegger or Bay Stater what they think about this circle of rage. Think Pedro Martinez versus Don Zimmer, only even more ugly, if you can believe it. With all due respect to the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the true shot heard round the world was the utterance of a solitary, rather naughty, made up imprecation: Masshole. Fifty emails later, The Captain realized he’d stumbled onto a hidden undercurrent of trivial pathos, which is a rather contentious way of saying that you, my readers, share The Captain’s disjointed and distorted view of the world. Good for you! I will not kick the dead horse of the Rotary any more, mostly because its corpse is virtually unrecognizable after the deluge of blows it received during the commentary subsequent to my latest post. However, as you may or not have noticed, depending on your tolerance for alcohol, I now have a blog! This allows you to post comments on line and away from prying corporate eyes, so I encourage, nay, egg you on to post your comments for all to read. Many of you are more funny than me. Many of you aren’t but think you are, but your comments will still provoke laughter, only for different reasons.
Oh, and one final comment on the bane of my driving existence: speed bumps. They suck.
So believe The Captain when he says: Cars are evil.
Yours with my muffler dangling,
The Captain
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