Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Minivans Are Tangible Evidence of Evil

Well, I've got some time to kill so let's make a blog entry, shall we?  I am having my CPAP machine adjusted (a task that I am not trusted to do on my own) and the respiratory therapist is slated to arrive here between 11 and 1 to do this 30 second task.  I really wish I could remember if I chose 11 to 1 over some other time slot because if I did I need to go give myself a swirly or something because this is crap (vs cpap - ha!).  I'm hungry and I want to leave my house.  So, back to blogging:

The title to this entry is a bumper sticker that I saw many years ago and may or may not have purchased.  The car that I covered in stickers is now living out its golden years in New Orleans with Andy so I can't go outside and confirm if that one is on there or not.  Regardless, at the time I thought it was perfect and I kind of still do.  I have no doubt that there are people reading this who drive a minivan so let's just say I'm not talking about you.  (I might be but let's just say I'm not)  Here are some things that I don't understand about my fellow drivers:

1.  I have driven many minivans over the years.  I will admit that they are not the easiest to back up and be fully confident that you are seeing everything behind you.  Still, other than that, they are no harder or easier to drive than any other vehicle commonly found on the roads.  So why is it that so many people drive them as if they have no freaking idea how to do it.  They change lanes too soon after passing because the minivan is longer than they expect, they park like ass clowns because the minivan is wider than they expect, and they drive like frickin' Dale Jr. because apparently the engine is more powerful then they expect.  Is there too much shit happening inside the van to be paying full attention to what's going on outside?  I'm aware that some people in SUV's have this same difficulty but what makes it so galling in minivans is what happens after they just ran a stop sign and pulled out in front of you.  You know what happens.  They give you the look like you are some kind of assassin sent from the future to single-mindedly try to kill their precious children.  SUV people will also pull out in front of you or cut you off but the difference is that at no point will they even acknowledge that something bad almost just happened.

2.  What is up with people's obsession with backing into parking spaces?  I feel like this is getting more prevalent lately.  I can't figure out the benefit of doing this.  They're trading the process of backing out of a parking space for backing into one so there's no less driving in reverse.  In fact, it's easier to back out into a whole parking lot lane than it is to back into a single parking space so overall it's more work.  For the same reason it's not saving time because it's quicker to back out then to back in.  So...I don't get it.  There's only one reasonable explanation in my mind:  they're planning on robbing the place because that's how getaway drivers park.

3.  Truck nuts.  Not OK.  Ever.  They actually make me sad for the driver who is clearly so profoundly insecure and worried that someone somewhere might think that his lifted diesel Dodge Ram is a female truck that he had to attach male genitalia to it.  I'm not even going to get into the insanity of assigning a gender to your vehicle (mostly because I do it).  I wonder if there is some sort of analogous feminizing car accessory out there...like boobs that go on the grill.  I'd look it up but I'm resolving to try to learn at least a few new wholesome things before I add to my already considerable repertoire of inappropriate knowledge.

4.  Am I the only one who pays attention when moving from an offramp to a new highway to whether or not there is a merge lane?  There's one like this near the mall here and almost every time I take the exit when I get to the bottom of the ramp there is a car stopped at the bottom watching the other cars go by.  The problem here is that there is a merge lane so the idea is to keep going, use that blinker and merge into the traffic.  Easy peasey.  I'm pretty sure it's a standard thing in road design.  I've seen it before lots of times, I swear.  If you're one of those people be sure to look in your rear view mirror.  If you see a person in an orange Jeep waving their arms and yelling, that's me.  If you don't read lips, I'm saying "You get your own lane, you funky idiom!"

I want to share one thing with you all before I go.  I've come up with an expression to describe when people are operating their vehicles in an unsafe or obnoxious manner.  Feel free to use it but if it gains worldwide popularity be sure to remember you heard it here first.  Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you....

Drivin' Douche

5 comments:

  1. My husband backs into parking spaces and I never realized the inefficiency of it. I just emailed him to point it out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Someone did point out to me tonight that a police friend of theirs parks like that because he may actually need to leave to go somewhere in a hurry (he's not a patrol cop who presumably is off duty when he's off duty). So I will add that this backing in thing only makes sense for robbers and cops. A nice bit of symmetry, that!

    ReplyDelete
  3. The backing-into-spaces thing baffles me as well, especially at grocery stores where it's more difficult to get your stuff to the trunk end of a backed-in car. But I don't mind when people do it EXCEPT when the whole process impedes others. If there's no one behind you or coming toward you, knock yourself out, otherwise don't be a tool and hold up two lanes of a parking lot aisle unnecessarily. :P

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Drivin douche." Love it. Perfect, and I plan to test it out soon. Thanks for the epithet; I'm always looking for new ones, so my enraged swearing doesn't get stale. I mean, how many times can a man say "Turn the f*****g wheel, you ignorant a**f**k!" before it grows tiresome? KPD

    ReplyDelete
  5. Glad I could help, Kevin. Let me know how it works out for you!

    ReplyDelete