From the vault – revised (various dates):
When I was writing “Common Sense” essays for TONIT (pronounced “Toe=nit”) – that other newspaper in town – I wrote a series of satirical observations on the types of motorists we must endure in our daily lives. I wrote them under the umbrella title “Confessions of a Taxi Driver,” because that’s what I was when I wrote them. I will update them periodically, beginning now.
Blessed are the horn-honkers, for they shall live in silence.
The vehicles that horn-honkers operate apparently have been manufactured without brakes. That’s why they honk – to warn other motorists (or the occasional pedestrian) that their vehicles cannot slow down or stop altogether while they are barreling down the streets. Other motorists (or the occasional pedestrian) must get out of the way, or else!
Those vehicles which are equipped with brakes are driven by motorists who apparently do not know how to use them. And so, the horn-honkers warn slow-moving motorists (or the occasional pedestrian) that they need to speed up a tad or risk devastating consequences.
There is a third kind of horn-honker, and he wants to call attention to his specially designed/festooned vehicle. He will honk at all hours of the day or night until he either sees no one to honk at or has worn out his device.
Blessed are the tailgaters, for they shall live in darkness.
Tailgaters are the younger brothers of the horn-honkers, because they appear to be sitting in your back seat, looking over your shoulder, and checking your speedometer. This is an illusion, however; they are actually sitting on your rear bumper in order to intimidate you. They want you to stop suddenly and allow them to bump into you whereupon they can sue you for damages to their vehicle, the possibility that you could sue them for damages notwithstanding.
•Blessed are the runners, for they shall live in Heaven (or Hell, as the case may be) sooner than they expected.
Runners are those daring young men in their magnificent jalopies who accelerate in order to beat the traffic signal when it switches from green to yellow or – horrors! – from yellow to red. They have extremely important business to attend to and therefore cannot wait for the next green light. Why else would they do such a thing?
I have this long-standing desire to be able to cast illusions. Whenever I would see a runner in the making, I would cast the illusion of an old person with a cane walking across the intersection and watch gleefully as he/she slams on his/her brakes (assuming, of course, that he/she drives a vehicle equipped with such devices), spin around a few times, and crash into the nearest tree/telephone pole. Me thinks that runners would never, never – well, hardly ever – run again.
•Blessed are the jump-starters, for they shall live in fear.
Jump-starters are those motorists who inch their way into the intersection when the yellow light for cross-traffic appears. They grow tired of waiting to get on with their extremely important business and so risk being a quarter of the way across the intersection before their light turns green. The only thing which will stop them is a runner.
•Blessed are the short-cutters, for they shall live in shame.
Short-cutters are the first cousins to jump-starters. They too need to be somewhere else in a hurry and therefore cut across the left-hand lane of the cross-traffic, regardless if any other motorist happens to be there. To avoid any nastiness, therefore, cross-traffic motorists must halt ten yards (or more) from the intersection; otherwise, they will lose their left fenders and half of their engines.
•Blessed are the weavers, for they shall live in pompousness.
Weavers are the most active motorists during “rush hour” (an oxymoron if there ever was one). There is no space in the flow of traffic too small for them to enter in order to attend to their extremely important business. Possessing more moves than an NFL running back, they jump from lane to lane and leave lesser motorists breathing their exhaust fumes.
When, many decades ago, I happened to live in the metropolitan Los Angeles area (Pasadena, if you are a stickler for details, dear reader), I was introduced to this classification of motorist the hard way. The locals called the weaving the “Los Angeles Shuffle,” and some acquaintances told me how to perform it. Upon seeing a space in the flow of traffic, one counts to three, swerves left or right (as the case may be) into the space, and keeps a sharp eye out for the next space to appear. Needless to say, one hears about it from any number of horn-honkers.
To be continued…