→ I'm heading to WalMart last week (because it's the only place where I can find Luzianne Family Size Ice Tea Bags, since you asked.) I'm in the left turn lane to hang a louie onto Rt 43 and when the light turns green, the car in front of me, being piloted by a person of unknown gender (tinted windows) does not move, even though I gave them a polite wakeup tootaroonie on the horn. Suddenly the person began gesticulating wildly, lifting what was either their middle finger or a pretzel stick, and soon made their intention known by sidling over into the lane to go ahead straight. But because the car was from Pennsylvania, I was able to attribute it to them being "one of those damned Pennsylvania drivers." (It could have just as easily been someone from Delaware or DC.)
→ We're going to the Book Thing yesterday and a car passed us on Perring Parkway like they were giving something away down by the Montebello Pumping Station. Every time we came to a red light, there was that car, and he would zoom away when the light turned green, only to be there waiting for us at the next red light.
→ I could cite examples of people texting and checking their Instagram until the cows came home with their own phones. But that's just what I see as I'm driving. Then I go on Instagram and people are showing action photos of the jerk in front of them, or a coyote ululating on Beaver Dam Rd, or a traffic backup on 83 South, and I realize these are pictures taken from the driver's seat...
→ And Friday night, as I came home from the Giant without Luzianne Family Size Ice Tea Bags, I see an interesting tableau vivant just at the entrance to our court...two vehicles that had just recently played bumper cars, one of which was perched up on the sidewalk where I might have been walking! had I not been at the Giant. I parked at our house and ankled down the hill to get the word. It seems that a car being driven by a female massage therapist was turning in to our cul-de-sac, and in the process of turning in, was struck by a Honda CRV being driven by a man who had the right of way. As I bathed in the exchange between the two drivers and the neighbor who came out because out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, he got up from dinner to see what was the matter, I heard the woman tell the guy who was driving the Honda, "I forgot to look when I was turning."
I recounted to that neighbor as we walked home later that my dad gave me advice when I learned to drive, during the Lyndon Johnson administration. Dad said to drive while assuming that every other vehicle on the road was being operated by a homicidal maniac bent on killing me and all others on the road.
He hasn't been wrong all that often.
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