Yellow means warning for good reason
I've been sorely underusing an important component of any car-- the horn. Just thinking about all those poor, deprived people out there who want to utilize that angry, annoying appendage but can't, or even worse off, people who have no cars at all; it makes to sad to think that in the three and a half years that I've been driving my car, I've used it three times. The first time was the obligatory "breaking in" of the new car, when I pressed every button, pushed every lever, just out of pure excitement and curiosity. The second time was when I was in the car with Bella in front of Walgreens, and a car was backing up out of a parking spot and apparently didn't see the fairly large, weighty object behind her. Thank goodness it wasn't a smile child or maurading circus clown or something. And the third and final time I've used my car horn was last summer when I was working at the Handicapped Development Center, and the group I was taking to the zoo was so excited about seeing an oncoming truck on the highway with the words "smile" on the side (it was a Colgate distributing truck), that I was coerced into giving the friendly "beep beep" as it passed in front of us, so that the driver could do the same, only in slightly amplified decibals.
I was thinking about this sad fact as I pulled into the school parking lot this morning, after a very near miss with a passing vehicle. Being on Grand Ave., the hotspot for impetuosly blindsighted college students, crackheads and vagrants (yes, sometimes synonymous), I am on high alert on most occasions while driving. Today though, semi-awake and only a quarter of the way caffeinated, there must have been a higher power at work which directed me from harm's way and the school bus that was rambling its way north at top speed, using two out of three lanes. Apparently two lanes weren't enough, because it greedily crossed the median into mine, albeit at an intersection. Deciding that he was already halfway between here nor there, the driver did a U-turn and sped off gleefully, leaving me in a state of frenzy, agitation, and disbelief. A schoolbus driver, of all people, who supposedly go through stringent licensing regimes... As aforementioned, there are things that I don't use quite often enough in daily life, like the sometimes necessary car horn, but I'll make an addition to that growing list. In this case, I was thinking that I definitely don't make enough use of my middle finger in all of its glorified, tried and true, American symbolism.
All things to work on.
posted by Sheila @ 9/30/2004 06:40:00 PM
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