What you might call driving
It occurs to me that I haven't blogged in a while.
I thought I'd point something out for a moment.
I have, for a while, been telling my non-Mass friends what living in this godforsaken place is like, especially as it involves driving. I tell them that every moment I am behind the wheel of my car, I feel as though someone is trying to kill me. This isn't doing it.
So, how about this? You know when you're watching a kid and they don't know what they're doing and they're just about to get pegged in the head with lamp or something because they don't quite understand gravity? Yeah, that feeling that you get when you know that in a milisecond there will be disaster? That is the feeling that you have every moment that you are driving in Massachusetts.
Let me explain. The other day, I turned right on green light. Imagine that in your head, I'm sure you've done it a million times. Now, while I was turning right, there was a guy in the left hand turn lane in the opposite lane from me. He did not have an arrow, and in fact, as there were cars going straight through the intersection, he should have had to wait for those cars to follow me down the street.
Okay, so I turn right. I, then, immediately look up into my rear view mirror to see that this guy is right on my bumper, and I mean RIGHT ON IT. Rather than wait for one car to go before he turned left, he gunned it, but since of course I wasn't gunning it, he ended up having to slam on his breaks to keep from rear ending me.
End of story? Not at all, the asshole follows me on my bumper like this through another right turn, a right turn at a stop sign (still on my bumper) and I lose him only when I turn onto the freeway. He goes straight and ends up at the end of a line of six or so cars, and he's no shit four feet away from the bumper of the guy in front of him on a two lane road, as if he can get the guy to pull over onto the embankment so that he can pass and ride the ass of car number 5 until that guy pulls over and then it's on to 4.
What I have just described is what it is like to drive for fifteen minutes in Massachusetts. Shit this bad, or worse, is encountered every fifteen minutes.
I thought I'd point something out for a moment.
I have, for a while, been telling my non-Mass friends what living in this godforsaken place is like, especially as it involves driving. I tell them that every moment I am behind the wheel of my car, I feel as though someone is trying to kill me. This isn't doing it.
So, how about this? You know when you're watching a kid and they don't know what they're doing and they're just about to get pegged in the head with lamp or something because they don't quite understand gravity? Yeah, that feeling that you get when you know that in a milisecond there will be disaster? That is the feeling that you have every moment that you are driving in Massachusetts.
Let me explain. The other day, I turned right on green light. Imagine that in your head, I'm sure you've done it a million times. Now, while I was turning right, there was a guy in the left hand turn lane in the opposite lane from me. He did not have an arrow, and in fact, as there were cars going straight through the intersection, he should have had to wait for those cars to follow me down the street.
Okay, so I turn right. I, then, immediately look up into my rear view mirror to see that this guy is right on my bumper, and I mean RIGHT ON IT. Rather than wait for one car to go before he turned left, he gunned it, but since of course I wasn't gunning it, he ended up having to slam on his breaks to keep from rear ending me.
End of story? Not at all, the asshole follows me on my bumper like this through another right turn, a right turn at a stop sign (still on my bumper) and I lose him only when I turn onto the freeway. He goes straight and ends up at the end of a line of six or so cars, and he's no shit four feet away from the bumper of the guy in front of him on a two lane road, as if he can get the guy to pull over onto the embankment so that he can pass and ride the ass of car number 5 until that guy pulls over and then it's on to 4.
What I have just described is what it is like to drive for fifteen minutes in Massachusetts. Shit this bad, or worse, is encountered every fifteen minutes.
posted by Monstro D. Whale | 5:49 PM
3 Comments:
Man I am really sorry about that. I was in a hurry. Really. I was late for a meeting. Or something. Dinner? Whatever. I needed to get there!
That's why guns should be legal and rampant. Try pulling that shit in Texas where everyone's packing a sidearm... I bet you'll find nothing but exemplary courtesy in Texas.
I used to drive like an asshole when I was 16 or 17. But, after a few speeding tickets, my dad sat me down & said, "Patrick, we live in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing at all even remotely interesting for hundreds of miles. Where in the HELL are you in such a hurry to go?"
I had no answer for him & corrected my bad habits immediately. (But, I was never an a-hole like the dude you described.)
You have to understand. That dude I'm describing is like every third driver in this state. I can't even describe it in terms of bad habits. There are places like that: people drive okay except for one bad thing. No. In Massachusetts, every thing they do is wrong and/or illegal and/or done in front of cops that simply don't care.
Hey Q, glad to hear from you. I haven't been able to get onto your blog for the longest time. It just wouldn't load for some reason.
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