#351 Laying on the Horn

I was driving down the road the other day. I had just had another of those all-too-frequent encounters with electronic death. A gal had been coming out of a driveway on my right into the street. As is so often the case these days, she wasn’t actually making a curve as she emerged from the driveway, she was making a beeline, which, if you’ve ever seen a bee, is erratic indeed. Her intention appeared to be to emerge diagonally into the street in the quickest possible line to her ultimate destination. Unfortunately her destination was impeded by the large mass of metal and flesh that was my vehicle and me. Interestingly, she had bolted out so quick and so diagonally that she was almost directly into my lane. Had she continued she would have damn near hit me head on. Fortunately, I saw her, screeched to a halt and laid on the horn. Satisfying but pointless, because by the time any sound had actually emitted from the horn we were both stopped, she still with only one hand on the wheel and a scared slash sheepish look on her face and me with adrenalin running down my pants leg. Then she had the temerity to smile and wave at me. A gesture I would have taken with good grace—after all, we all make mistakes—had not the object in the hand she was waving been a cellphone—unflipped and apparently quite active. As I drove on, I noticed she put it back to her face and started gabbing, apparently telling whoever it was that had been interrupted by her near encounter with death that, ha ha, you’ll never guess what just happened.. I always wonder what the person on the other end hears in such an encounter. The screeching tires, the busting glass, the painful scream as someone gets kicked in the ass. Or is it just some unexplained dropout?
Life on the road is filled with indignity these days. Its seems that drivers are weaving more, cutting off others more and generally whipping out into traffic with no regard whatsoever for things like executing a full turn or actually using turn signals. Cellphones don’t kill people, idiots kill people. It’s just that a lot of idiots have cellphones. I’ve sat behind idiots who come to a complete stop in traffic waiting to turn left into a business. There’s a two-way left turn lane right next to them. Do they use it? No. Worse, do they have their turn signal on? No. It’s no fun holding up traffic if you appear to have a reason. Let the drivers behind you guess that maybe, if you screw up the courage, you may cross the road before the only vehicle coming in your direction, that old VW van, makes it the final three blocks to where you sit. A cellphone doesn’t cause something like that. It just makes you so much more angry when the idiot who’s holding up traffic has one stuck to his ear. It’s a sad commentary on society when an electronic device has more processing power than its user.
America, ya gotta love it.