I was driving to work and decided to take some things I read along the way literally. There was a dump truck in front of me stopped at a light. A sign on the back said stay back 200 feet.
Now understand I was the next vehicle in back of said truck and wondered how happy rush hour commuters would be if I decided to obey the sign.
I’d seen similar signs that read to stay back even greater distances. There was one that read stay back 300 feet. Another said 500 feet. I wondered how they picked these distances out. Was there a formula or was it completely random?
Anyhow, I tapped the breaks a few times and stopped behind the truck halted at the red light in the turn lane. The only thing about this the least bit unusual was the fact that I stopped at what I thought was 200 feet behind it. There was no way to get around me either as there were cement dividers on either side of the lane that passed under a railroad bridge. People were at my mercy.
You can probably guess what happened from here. The honking began. Then I looked in the rear view mirror and noticed what appeared to be a fellow Italian behind me (my mother is Italian). He was gesturing wildly with his hands and looked to be yelling—mouthing obscenities the likes of which I’ll not speculate on here.
As I was thinking this along with the horn honking completely unnecessary, the truck decided to make a right on red. I moved when he did and the honking and shouting ceased as the mad Italian veered off into the adjacent left lane as soon as it was available for his choosing.
Emboldened while at the same time feeling as if this social experiment was an exercise in futility, I decided to drive “normally” the rest of the way to work. Since one definition of normal is “according to society,” I started driving way too fast for conditions and the road I was on. But nobody was honking or yelling at me as I was driving like everyone else. That is, I was driving like a complete idiot inviting an accident to happen.
As I changed lanes without signaling, I simultaneously wondered why auto manufacturers are still even providing turn signals in cars. Nobody uses them. Maybe stop offering them standard and knock $1,000 off the price of the vehicle. Cars should never cost more than houses in my book and prices are out of control on them. Offer things like turn signals as options and see how much demand there is.
Another sign that gets me is the one some of us see in our side view mirrors that says something like, “Objects in mirrors appear closer than they are.” I feel that a statement like this is indicative of a poorly designed mirror. I mean, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney can star in a movie called “Gravity,” where the box office bottom falls out demonstrating a complete lack of it, and we can’t make a mirror that accurately depicts objects so they are actually not closer than they appear? To hell you say.
The other signs that kind of perturb me that I’m still seeing are the ones like “Jessica A-hole for District Superior Judge.” I would suggest that if Ms. A-hole was superior at all, she would hire a team of sign-taker-downers to get that sign taken down immediately. The election was over more than a week ago and whether she won or not has nothing at all to do with it. It’s just rude for the sign to still be up at this point.
Finally, as I parked and got out of my car, I saw the best sign yet–someone with a T-shirt (almost typed T-shit, oops, guess I just did anyway) that read, “Hey, I’m anal. Get over it.”
I just did.
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