Car Talk

I used to get worked up over drivers talking on their cell phones. Every time someone stopped acting like the experienced person behind the wheel I’m used to in Los Angeles because we drive so bloody much, I’d go through the five stages of grief, starting with denial.

They are NOT talking on their phone!

On schedule, I’d move to anger.

What a thoughtless jerk!

Next, the comfy stage of bargaining.

If you would just move to the slow lane when your phone rings, I wouldn’t have to hate you.

The fourth stage, depression, is the hardest to take.

The world is going to hell in a hand basket. Civility is a thing of the past.

But, now I’ve matured. I’ve reached the nirvana of the last and final stage: acceptance. I recognize it. Now that people-driving-while-chatting-on-cell-phones has a groove in my neurons, I don’t mind the languid way they drive, slowing from 70 to 50 for what seems like no reason. Or the way they turn their blinker on for 10 minutes before they change lanes. It’s a recognizable phenom, a known quantity.

And, sometimes, now I’m the person on the cell phone.

Bumperless

Bumpers. When did we decide that car bumpers are a bad thing? Someone tried to explain it away by saying that car makers eliminated the rubber and metal bumpers of our past in favor of plastic to make cars lighter. Lighter cars use less gas so in a roundabout way they were aiming for fuel efficiency. I don’t buy it. That doesn’t explain how SUVs sprang up at the same time that bumpers disappeared. So instead of a bumper that takes a few scratches and dents that might need replacing after a few run-ins with a shopping cart or an old lady backing out of the bank, the plastic sheet collapses and needs to be replaced at great expensive when it’s tapped. A fender-bender becomes a major repair.

I don’t remember agreeing to plastic bumpers.

Overpass

Driver's Seat