In my initial post I mentioned that I was having trouble sleeping. Partly due to the fact that my brain would not shut up at night I though perhaps some "scribbling" here might help unload the abundance of STUFF in my head! As it happens, the night after posting my first entry I slept TEN hours!! Coma-like! It was awesome. Honestly, I have no idea if there is a correlation between the writing and the sleeping, but it was fun to think so.
I'm pretty sure that I have reached the point in my life when I can be labeled a curmudgeon. Or maybe a misanthrope. People just PISS ME OFF! As far as I'm concerned I have good reason, too. I live in Southern California. Lots of people, lots of cars. Lots of people IN cars going someplace. All the time. Traffic is horrid. All the time. Unless you've lived here you don't understand why people don't talk about how FAR (like in miles) someplace is but rather they talk about how LONG it takes to get someplace (like in hours). Before I moved here I was baffled by the fact that no one would share a distance to a place. They'd tell me how long it'd take me to get there. And it wasn't until I had to commute to Los Angeles (for 11 hellish months!) that I got it. I had to drive 35 miles and it might take me 30 minutes. Or it could take me 2-3 hours. Nuts! The 405 is hell on earth. Back to people pissing me off.
You'd think that with as much time as folks spend in their cars they might be good at getting around. Drive like you want to get someplace. You'd think. But NO! Can cars saunter? People drive around like they've got nothing but time. Especially if I'm behind them and need to get someplace soon. Like this year! Of course the other thing drivers do is run red lights (when they're not going too slow they are going too fast - through intersections, running red lights or cutting others off in traffic). Bad drivers and awful traffic: item #1 in why I'm cranky most of the time!
Item #2: noise. When I was a kid I was told it wasn't polite to impose YOUR noise on others. Talking too loudly, playing music with a bass thump that rattles windows, or intruding on anothers personal space. Not surprisingly, I encounter violations of these nearly every day. I live on a corner lot with a four-way stop at the intersection. Nothing like having cars stop at the corner with sub-woofers thumping so loudly that I think Godzilla is storming the neighborhood! Is it a car, Godzilla, or just another earthquake that is rattling the windows? I half expect drivers of offending vehicles to bleed from the ears. Must be why they insist on driving around with the car windows rolled down: they are staving off damage to their ears while assaulting those of innocent inhabitants of adjacent homes. Like me. <sigh>
It was not my intention to have a rant blog. I wanted to post thoughtful, ponderous paragraphs that would strike a chord with readers. Maybe I will sometime. But clearly not tonight! Is it just me? Or do we live in a time when there is less civility and consideration for others? Help me out and let me know if I'm alone in my curmudgeon-ness or whether any of you have had the same reactions as I have.
Ok--bed time. Maybe another great night of sleep now that I've gotten some "grrrrrr" off my chest?
I love the cars sauntering reference. It is the perfect description for the Mississippi relatives of your California drivers who I frequently find myself behind when I am trying to get the kids to school and myself to work. You are not alone in your curmudgeon-ness. I am the same way. I have become my dad God forbid.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that you reference Mississippi...I lived there for 17 years and often complained that MS drivers didn't know the difference between "yield" and "merge" when it came to accessing highways. Drove me nuts! And at the time I thought SURELY that behavior was unique to people in places that didn't have a ridiculous number of cars/drivers. Turns out I was wrong on that one!
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