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8:15 p.m. - January 23, 2002
how to drive like a normal human being
ugh, there is nothing whatsoever going on in my brain, and this is the cause:

How To Drive Like A Normal Human Being It�s not my fault; I just happen to have been born into a family of terrible drivers. I knew this when I was two and my mother drove into a telephone pole while trying to retrieve something from the car floor, toppling the pole so that it crumpled the front right and the left rear side of the car. People said it was the weirdest looking accident they�d ever seen. I also knew this when I was five and my dad liked to terrorize my mother by weaving in and out of traffic and playing �walk the dog� with the brake pedal. By all rights, I should have grown up to drive like an combination of those two; that is to say, weaving in and out of traffic to get to the telephone pole faster; but somehow I escaped the odds. Having now had two years of accident-free, ticket-free, and telephone pole free driving under my belt, I feel I have the right to outline some guidelines on how to be a nice, friendly, unobtrusive driver, and then possibly staple them inconspicuously above my parents� desks. Were I to do such a thing, what follows is what I might staple.

How To Drive Nicely, Avoid Accidents, and Not Piss People Off. (A Friendly Suggestion Handbook) First and foremost, you need to pull out of your parking space without aggravating the neighbours. Mom, this means not trampling their flower beds, and Dad, this means not gunning your engine while it is still in park to get back at the motorcyclists who shoot down our street at one o�clock in the morning. Good. Now. Assess your surroundings. Is it snowing? I hope you�ve cleaned your windshield. Mom, this doesn�t mean clearing a one foot square space directly in front of where your eyes are. This means taking the brush and getting the snow off all exposed windows you might possibly need to see out of. Is it raining? Turn your wipers on. Turn your lights on. Is it nighttime? Be sure your lights are on. Not your brights. Just because you drive a piggy SUV doesn�t mean you get to blind people too; and while we�re on the subject, Dad, brights are not weapons that we aim at people to punish them for driving too close to us. Pedestrians have the right of way. Even Northwestern students. Just because they�re so brazen that they will hop right out into the middle of Sheridan Road at the height of rush hour doesn�t mean you�ll get any less jail time if you kill one. And it doesn�t help your case if you tell the policeman he�s the sole reason why our police force is shot to hell, Dad. Speed bumps are there for a reason. Shooting over them at seventy miles an hour to prove that your car is a badass will only kill your tires and cost you money. Stop signs mean stop. Shooting through them to prove you�re not a slave to traffic laws will only get you a ticket and cost you money, and possibly kill someone. When driving on ice, having four wheel drive doesn�t necessarily mean that if you go eighty miles an hour you won�t careen out of control and end up upside down on someone�s front lawn. On entrance ramps to the expressway, you need to actually speed up to match the speed of traffic before attempting to merge, or else you may well be overrun by irate men driving eighteen-wheelers. Trains are your friends, but never attempt to race one across the tracks. When the lights start flashing, stop. You�ve got brakes that can stop in a second or so. The train takes a mile to stop. Who will end up flattened? It won�t be the train. All right. Now, a little overview of traffic laws that we need to make sure we follow a little bit more carefully. Mom, you can�t turn left on Dempster from Ridge. You couldn�t yesterday, and you couldn�t the day before, and the eight signs that adorn the corners with their big red crossed-out left turn arrows will still be there today. You can�t do it. And if you try, you will back up traffic all the way back to Lake Street and people will hate you. That�s why the sign is there. And Dad, you cannot drive 60 miles per hour on Sheridan Rd. The speed limit is still 35. Your argument that the lights are set wrong doesn�t make any difference to the policeman. He doesn�t care how the lights are set. In fact, they probably set them that way on purpose so they can give out more speeding tickets and meet their quota every month. He has a vested interest in caring how fast you drive, and on a side note, you�ve already had two tickets this year and if you get another one they revoke your license. Just a little something to think about. Now if, while you�re driving, you come across something unusual like a turn, Mom, what you have to do is keep your eyes on the road. Just because your two-year-old child�s rattle has fallen on the floor does not mean the world stops revolving to allow you to pick it up and give it back to her. Time will keep on ticking, and the steering wheel, unaided by your guiding hands, will steer itself into, oh, say, a telephone pole. If you happen to come across such aggravating slow, smelly vehicles such as the CTA, you are allowed to pass them. This does not mean you have the right to scream at the bus driver that it can�t stop on this street as you simultaneously let the air out of its tires with a pocketknife. Buses can stop wherever they want. So can police cars, and so can UPS trucks. Letting the air out of their tires only causes them to be blocking the road for longer. So don�t do it. In following these rules, I guarantee that you will receive a decreased number of middle fingers out the window. You will also pay the police force less money. Telephone poles will be less likely to �jump out at� you, because you will see potential dangers like them as they�re coming, instead of as you are flying through the windshield. People will stop running away screaming every time you ask them to go for a ride with you, and may even begin timidly climbing into the front passenger seat. Make sure they buckle up.

Ranting at imaginary parents (however imaginary they may or may not be) is tiring.

 

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