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.
