He’s gone, you get me. I know, it’s excruciating.
Yesterday, driving home from work, I got caught in backup on I-97 northbound. Something like five miles of backup, maybe more. I imagine, given the glacial pace of traffic, that the backup extended well on to route 50 at its peak.
I have a theory about sitting in backup, in that it’s like mourning.
Step one, you’re upset. “Oh, man. What the shit is this?”
Step two, you’re pissed. “Fucking shitbaggers! Fucking go! Can’t you fucking see the cars are moving? Christ!”
Step three, final step: despair. It involves no speaking, no yelling. You’re just slumped in your seat, beaten, traffic bumper to bumper as far as you can see in every direction. You’re imagining you’ll probably die on that highway, wondering why in the hell you like to drive a manual transmission because now your left leg is sore.
Anyway, I was stumbling well into a hole of step three about an hour into the gridlock. There’s helicopters overhead and their buzzing is giving me a headache. Just as I’m coming up to the source of the gridlock - a trash truck which has managed to get flipped upside down - a van pulls up next to me. A late-twenties/early-thirties young man looks over at me, obviously trying to get my attention.
“Hey buddy,” Van Guy says. He gives me a thumbs-up.
“Uh, hi,” I reply.
“Hey, check this out!” Van Guy pulls out a magazine, flips to a page, and shows me, obviously pleased with himself. It’s at this point I realize he’s showing me a random page from the porno he’s been looking at. So I’m weirded out, a little, but don’t want to piss off a guy in a van in backup, so I laugh a little. “Hang on, hang on a sec. Check this out!” he says, as he flops the magazine open to a giant photograph of a vagina as he happily nods, complete with thumbs-up and shit-eating grin.
“Terrific!” I exclaim, laughing hysterically, just as an opening appears in traffic and I speed off onto the right-hand shoulder, the only lane getting around all three blocked lanes caused by the fucking upside-down trash truck.
Seriously, strangest thing that has ever happened to me in traffic, without question.
People are so fucking bizarre.
You forgot the denial step–oh, this’ll clear up in a few minutes. It can’t possibly be anything serious… Usually lasts about 2.1 seconds until you look up and realize that there are seventeen thousand cars in front of you.
WTF? “Traffic? Shit! Well, I guess I can get caught up on my porn!” Ever notice that they sell porn at airport newsstands? What type of demented freak can’t last a four-hour flight without porn? As is he really going to sit there on a crowded plane browsing through closeups like something out of a gynocology textbook as if it were the fucking Economist?
I hate people.
During my Step 2 I like to give the other cars identities, “Let’s go, DICK”, “Come on, you fuck.”, “Move it, you STUPID ASS.”
Unfortunately, or fortunately, I haven’t been shown any porn while driving. I have seen a lot of people picking their noses, oh, and I did see a guy getting a blow job. That was neat.
No penis porn? What a jip!
Even more strange than the time you got road head from the ex-clownie homeless man walking cross country carrying a cross?
What? I just thought you’d enjoy a little beaver to break up the monotony of the traffic jam. Fine. Next time, I’ll keep my porno to myself.
You didn’t phone-cam his ass? Why the #### do you even have the technology if you refuse to use it? You may as well keep a ringing soup bone in your pocket.
I could have been worse. He could have had a bible with him.
I was in the same traffic jam, Mokie, but I didn’t have some whack-job with porno next to me. Bummer. I did use the shoulder, though - my first time EVER doing that, in almost 10 years of driving. It felt liberating.
That’s hilarious, you were driving next to Stiffler!
And ACW, love the ringing soup bone line. Haha!
Well, a good porno does help to alleviate tension, doesnt it?
Or, perhaps he was trying to distract you and cut in front..
Anyways, thanks for the laugh.