After some time spent with a focus group this weekend (i.e. my family trapped at the dinner table at my mom’s house) it turns out that I am a bad, bad driver and I take peoples’ lives into my hands every time I get behind the wheel. I believe my companion even used the phrases “anticipating a bloody wreck” and “do you know the following distance rule?”
YES I KNOW THE FUCKING FOLLOWING DISTANCE RULE. The rule is, go the fucking speed limit so I don’t have to follow you so fucking closely. If I can read your squishy vegan/Howard Dean bumper stickers then something is terribly wrong, because I have awful eyesight.
Ooh, maybe I shouldn’t admit that.
Anyway, this all started last Friday when my sister and I were going to pick up my older daughter, Franny, from her dad, whom I will refer to (until I get tired of it) as Seattle Federline*. A silver Honda I was following suddenly swerved off to the curb in front of me in Wallingford. “Hmm,” I thought. “I guess they really wanted that parking spot.”
My sister turned to me. “Wow, they gave you a serious dirty look.”
“Really? Are you sure?” I said.
“Well, you were tailgating them like crazy.”
“Wha…what? Tailgating? Me? But everyone in this town drives so slo….Crap. It’s me.”
My sister said nothing, letting righteous good-driver silence suffuse through the car.
“Really? Are you sure? Crap.”
Later, on the way back from getting Franny, I had almost pulled onto my street when I saw another Honda in front of me.
I joked to my sister, “Ha, another Honda, maybe I can get them to get out of my way, too.” Instantly the second Honda jerked over to the curb, letting me pass before driving off again.
“Jesus, what now?” I said.
“Don’t worry,” my sister said. “That couldn’t have been you, you were too far away.”
“Maybe they are looking for an address,” I said.
“Maybe,” she said.
I think this whole thing is totally unfair! Here I am, stuck in Seattle, home of random passive-aggressive road asshattery, after learning to drive in Phoenix, Arizona, a place where the fast lane means 90 MPH and if you don’t respect that, you will get plugged or driven off the road with a cowcatcher that someone built in their garage, in between breaks on cleaning their gun(s) which they wear, unconcealed and strapped to their chests. To the library, even. I saw an awful lot of unconcealed guns at the library there, because that’s where I hung out. The library’s dangerous, man. Someone could really do something with that box of crapping golf pencils. But I digress.
So now I am boycotting driving, for the next few days at least, until I get tired of that, too. Now I am being ferried around by my companion, a driver who learned to drive in Oregon. (State motto: “We’ll get there eventually.”) He drives and the Seattle drivers, who are anxious to go their risk-taking neck-breaking 31 MPH tailgate him, while he goes the Oregon-standard 25.
“We’ll get there eventually, and in one piece,” he says, as I claw frantically at my child-locked rolled up window.
I’ve got an idea: what we need is a city of origin plate. Mine can say Phoenix and Overcaffeinated and people can get out of the way. My companion’s can say Portland with the additional bonus designation “Librarian” and people can sigh and pull off onto the side streets. Everyone wins! Except for me because I am staying home today, as I am afraid of killing the baby in a bloody wreck.
*Seattle Federline: Allergic to work and once told my mother that when I finished graduate school I would be his “sugar mama.” Your wife of eight years is not your SUGAR MAMA. Glah.
In Other News: The Box Opening Was MIIIINE
I am currently enjoying the horrors of this post over at the Childfree Hardcore LJ Community. First it made me go “gleep!” because this person, who may be excessively hyperbolic like me, claims that they (out loud) threatened to stab the little child at the Harry Potter event in the eye with their wand.
It freaks me out that people can hate children this much. I don’t think that all people should have or want children themselves, or have them in their lives, and props if you know that about yourself. But all these hardcore people were children once. I know, duh. But I think about how much butt-wiping I have done, and pukey face-kissing, and it makes me sad to think that the girls could grow up to despise children. I can’t really explain it better than that.
Finally I had to laugh and laugh because this?
Fucking moo brings her bratty sprog in at 8:59am dressed in a generic Kmart cape with stars and glitter and fucking gaudy BLAH. Twig for a wand.
OMG WITTLE PWESHUS SO CUTE OMG YOU CAN OPEN THE BOX AND HAVE THIS BOOK YOU CAN’T READ AND *fawning fawning, blatant breederism etc*
THE FUCKING KID WON’T EVEN REMEMBER THIS. THE BOX OPENING WAS MINE. MIIIIINE.
I wouldn’t have minded if someone had said “Oh look Sass, you are best-dressed but would you mind if this land-mine amputee opened the box instead?” I would have said “Absolutely no problem. Go for it.” But no. FUCKING CROTCHDROPPING GETS THE HONOUR. I’m furious. On principle of course, not out of any sense of entitlement. Well yes, entitlement also. But I WORKED FOR IT, I DESERVED IT.
I made an effort. I spent money making an effort. I showed up early. I will remember and treasure this event for ever and eternity. And I’m passed over for an ugly little brat with a sparkly tie. Woo fucking woo.
…is funny. I am going to try to work “crotchdropping” into conversations as much as I can from now on. And Sass? You do know that the main characters of the Harry Potter books are…CHILDREN?
“it makes me sad to think that the girls could grow up to despise children”
Well, that’s the key, isn’t it? If you actually grow up, you tend to adjust your worldview to include the concept that not everything is about YOU. Once people overcome the enormous drag factor of their own self-centeredness, they stop disliking children simply for being children. I really don’t think Frenchie and Strudel are in much danger of this, aside from that inevitable teenage trial-by-ordeal wherin nobody can find worth in anything that doesn’t directly beneift them in some tangible fashion.
Not being a “kid person” is understandable – many people aren’t until they become parents, and even then they tend to like their own brand and just stare blankly at others – but ostentatiously hating and ranting about them says to the world that you fear them, and that you view them as a threat equal in stature to yourself. After all, why hate something that you keep insisting is beneath your notice?
Oh hey, a rant.
MAN it’s good to have you back.
i 2nd that :)
No, the slow Portland drivers are the transplants from California who haven’t a clue as to how to drive in Liquid Sunshine. (That’d be rain for you dry-landers).
Me, I learned to drive in a small town in southern Oregon, most notable for it’s miles and miles of twisty back roads – that I learned how to navigate at several times the speed limit in a ’64 Chevy pickup.
“Warp 2, Mr. Sulu”
My car ID sign would read “Pittsburgh and in a hurry”!! Of course, in Pittsburgh, there are often stop signs at the end of entrance ramps. Which is why I didn’t refer to them as acceleration ramps.
Seattle-slow is definitely what I drive through a lot. ANd after living in Southern California for 15 years, the amount of traffic here can’t even touch SoCal traffic!!!