How In A Hurry Are You?

Since moving to a location that necessitates the use of the Turnpike and therefore paying for the Turnpike twice a day, I have discovered just how much in a hurry other drivers appear to be.  Some are far more excited about getting to work or school in the morning than I am, I guess, and it doesn’t seem to matter if I’m at the exact change toll booth at 7:30am or 8:15am.  There is always someone a car or two behind me so entirely anxious to get to work that they cannot wait for me to put my exact change into the counter or for the counter to count my exact change and switch the light from red to green; that person has got to express their enthusiasm for getting to where they are going by pressing hard on their car horn just to let the rest of us know how much more dedicated he or she is to his or her commute.

O.K. I get it that the exact change toll booth is also the E-Z Pass toll booth so some commuters can just slowly drive through without stopping.  Those are the conscientious drivers, I guess, who’ve thought ahead about their fellow commuters and don’t want to cause any kind of bottlenecking at the entrance to the Turnpike.  I apologize that I haven’t quite gotten it together yet.  My toll tag has been applied for but it hasn’t arrived yet, so until then, I’m stuck paying cash to pass through those dismal gray gates to that granite and concrete road that leads to my eight hour shift and, really, I’m not in that much of a hurry.  It’s not that I hate my job, it’s just that I don’t feel the need to kill myself or anyone else to get there.

This morning the little red Jeep that was so anxious to get through the toll booth from behind me cut across all sorts of traffic and solid lines to break away from the “slow” cars that were going, you know, the speed limit.  All I could think about was that studies have been done saying that speeding for short distances does not technically get you to your location any faster due to things like traffic, street signs and lights, and the space/time continuum.  However, it does endanger your own life and those of the others around you.

Maine is made up of many Routes that are considered main roads.  I have to get off of the Turnpike and onto several of these Routes in order to get to work and home.  Yesterday a woman was hit by a speeding van as she crossed the street, one of these Routes, to check her mail.  The van didn’t stop.  The woman was taken to the hospital where she died.  I’m sure that the person in the van was in a terrible hurry, anxious to get to where he or she was going, just like the woman crossing the street was.

I guess I can’t imagine needing to go anywhere worth dying for.

Tags: soap box, speeding

Wrong Way, Moron!

The other morning, I drove into the parking garage like every other morning. We share it with the hotel next door, some nearby office buildings and the general public. This means that sometimes it’s fuller than others and sometimes there’s a moron or two wandering around. That morning, there was a fully licensed one.

I wasn’t even to the top of the first ramp and there was a car that wanted to back out. I thought to myself about what a lucky break that was. I should have realized that it never is lucky.

As I watched, he proceeded to back out up the ramp the wrong way on a one way ramp. Then as he and his car was facing me and the line of cars behind me, he proceeded to begin waving his arms at me and mouthing things at me in an animated way.

I blinked.

Then he proceeded to manuever his car so that he could pull between me and the parked cars in the one-way lane, took the time to pause so he could animatedly mouth things at me as he passed me and as I watched, he slowly did the same to all of the other cars on his way down and proceeded to pull into the entrance ramp.

I have no idea what happened next as I pulled into my first level parking spot and immediately forgot the whole thing until a few minutes ago when I saw some idiot trying to enter the exit ramp from our office window.

Don’t people read or pay attention?

What killed me is that he was angry at me for being in his way when he was going the wrong way in the first place and it obviously never occurred to him that the big line of cars and the narrow lane might mean something. Or even those “Wrong Way” signs above…

And that’s how most people are going through life these days. They don’t read the signs or see the signs and then they wonder who they get into the messes they do and for the most part, they’re pushing their way through life angrily shoving people out of their way, trying to force their way in whatever direction they think they should be going. Who cares about the rest of the world or the neighbors or the guy standing next to them? It’s all about individuals and self-satisfaction and my way is the only way or no way…

And I guess that’s what pisses me off so much when people can’t seem to figure out that it’s inconsiderate to walk in through the exit at Wal-mart and block all of those people trying to push their baskets out. They aren’t thinking about anyone but themselves and their shopping and their smilie-face savings and then they’re going to be just as frustrated when someone else is sauntering in an hour later through the exit door dragging their two year old and yelling at their teenager to pull her pants up because they can’t get their three baskets of groceries out to their car either.

Tags: soap box, pet peeves

What Are You Teaching Your Children?

TLC’s been running these “Life’s Lessons” commercials lately that are kind of funny and cute. People get little collectible trophy/figurines of horrible life mistake moments like a a husband who won’t turn the tv off while his wife is trying to neck or a woman yelling at someone and a little girl mimicing her and on and on. I like the one where the little girl is on the phone gossiping and telling whoever is on the other line about someone who has a new man every Friday and a new car in her driveway every Friday and who might as well be running a Bed & Breakfast and her mother is just staring at her.

Anyway, I thought about TLC’s “Life’s Lessons” yesterday afternoon when I was waiting in line in the parking lot at the Post Office. You know what I mean, right? I mean I was still in my car, waiting for one of those limited parking spots at the Post Office so I could go in and mail my six packages. There was a line of cars behind me and we had all been waiting patiently for our turn.

This woman in a relatively shiny new SUV packed full of hoodlum kids pulled next to me in the lane reserved for folks just driving through to the post office box drop off. Her eyes meets mine and then she pulls forward and cuts in line in front of me and takes the spot of the car that is just pulling out despite the loudness of my horn.

Now she wasn’t in a hurry because she took her time getting out of her spiffy SUV. There couldn’t have been some sort of postal emergency that made her need for that parking spot more important than mine. She saw me. She saw the line. She just didn’t feel it applied to her.

And as annoyed as I was at being forced to wait after having already waited my turn, what bothered me was what she was teaching those children in the SUV. She certainly wasn’t teaching them to respect other people or common courtesy. She wasn’t teaching them that good things come to those who wait.

She was teaching them to take what they want when they want it and people wonder where our kids learn to be spoiled brats who think society owes them.

Tags: TLC, soap box