Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Pretty Kitty

Farm Boy bought me a new car. This is a YUGE event in our house as we own our cars for decades. My cars always become something like family, with nicknames and personalities, and I find it hard to let them go. So when it clearly was time to trade in the Lexus sedan for something that, you know, drove, I struggled with actually making the decision. My car had been a stalwart and loyal companion and I felt that I was in some way abandoning him in his last days. It reminded me of a little film that I bought when my son was a toddler - The Brave Little Toaster. It was a Parents' Choice Award
Winner! Well, the parents who chose this little horror movie must have been Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis. The first time I watched it with our son, he had nightmares for weeks, and he never again liked the vacuum cleaner. Farm Boy and I used to joke that we should take it out of the closet and put it in his room after he had gone to sleep. AS A JOKE! WE WERE JOKING! We would never do anything like that. We loved our own sleep too much for those kinds of tricks.

Anyway, this movie was terrifying - filled with abandonment and death, and creepy little appliances. But the scene at the end where the cars get "killed" came vividly to mind when I had to leave my car at the dealers lot.




So I sadly, and with no small measure of guilt, left my car to his fate and drove off in my new car.

That should be the end of the story, except most of my stories have something to do with annoying, stupid people, and this is no exception. My new car is a Jaguar, and I do love, love LOVE it. It purrs like a kitten, kittens, and it suits me, I think. However, what has become a sincere struggle since acquiring it is the incredible number of dicks that have suddenly erupted on the highways of California! Despite the fact that this car is white, it is like waving a red flag in front of bulls. Men in everything from trucks to Toyota Corollas are now drag racing me, tailgating me, swerving to pass me. My little kitty brings out the beast in them.

Of course I thought it was just me, because I do have a tendency to give driving lessons to stupid people, but today my even-tempered and speed-limit-following Farm Boy mentioned he felt like he was in a Death Race 2000 outtake every time he drove the Jag. He was getting ready to leave for Southern California to spend a week at the Grand Prix International show jumping in the desert, when I asked if he wanted to drive the new car. "No way. It's too much stress. You can't drive that thing 10 miles without someone trying to kill you just to get around you. Everybody wants to race you."


So, for once in my life, it wasn't just me. The world really had become filled with assholes. And they are probably all voting for Trump.


9 comments:

  1. The car chomper didn't have transmission fluid smeared all over its "teeth"? They really missed a trick there.

    I used to have a little MGB, nobody wanted to race that I recall, but people did tend to try to run me off the road.

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  2. It's really weird, isn't it? That a hunk of metal (a GORGEOUS hunk of metal...but I digress), could provoke such dangerous reactions in people. I have started driving in the right hand lane and just going with the flow.

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    1. Yeah, With the MG, it may have just been so small and low to the ground that people didn't see it. Other than that it was a fun car.

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  3. I drive a bright Gatorade/Mountain Dew GREEN Hyundai Accent. I mean, LIGHT BRIGHT GREEN!!!! (just type "electrolyte accent" into the search engine of your choice.)

    The number of people who come up from behind me in the other lane, get to the point where the front of their hood, or maybe, just maybe, their rear seat are parallel with me in my driver's seat, and then try to switch lanes. In broad daylight. On a long straight stretch of road.

    How the hell do they not see my car?

    Of course I had a guy in a low sedan do the same thing when I was driving a Ford Aerostar, one of the old ones on the truck chassis. I mean, Dude! when you look out your passenger window all you can see is blue door!

    The world is full of people who should never, ever, have been able to get a driver's license.

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    1. I honestly believe that many drivers think that if they put on their turn signal it mean you MUST let them in, even if doing means slamming on your brakes and swerving! HAHAHA!

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  4. "The world is full of people who should never, ever, have been able to get a driver's license."

    As an ex truckie, I can vouch for this...

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    1. I bet you've seen enough stupidity to last a lifetime!

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  5. I've never figured out folks in cars trying to change lanes into a space currently occupied by a semi, something I've seen just often enough to know that it happens. The semi is going to win.

    My father had his Dodge Ram totalled by a little old couple pulling out of a gas station and turning left without looking to see who was coming from the right. Dad managed to swerve enough that he hit their sedan in the rear door and not a direct hit on the driver. His windshield was completely covered with broken glass from their car, and his engine block was several inches in several directions from it had started. Dad was shaken but fine; the EMTs backboarded both of the couple to take them to the hospital.

    Again, this was in broad daylight and decent weather, and it may not have been the biggest model, but it was still a pretty good sized truck. And green (not light, but still, green).

    Far, far too many people seem to think that they are so important to the scheme of the universe that the laws of physics (and common sense) don't apply to them.

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    1. First, they would have to be smart enough to understand the laws of physics! I'm betting that's part of the problem. I always want to scream out my window the second law of physics, "Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time!"

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