Picky Picky Picky

Is anybody else having a tough time with their innerwebs connections lately?  Guido said she heard something about solar flares wreaking havoc with satellites — I’d Google it if my connections would let me.  Or maybe it’s all those ascending souls?  Anyway, if you can’t read this, it’s because I couldn’t post it.

Here it is late May, which means the gawking seasonal tourists should have cleared out by now, returning the roadways to the local loony toons.  That’s disturbing, because driving around Broward, mostly east to west, I have observed an elevated level of incompetence behind the wheel lately.

Here’s what else I observe: it isn’t texting, telephoning, video games, or yowling mutant children causing the havoc.  It’s middle-aged and senior drivers, most crawling along well below the speed limit (and often in the left lane), barely capable of keeping their vehicles between the lines.  I also observe that a vast number of these weavers have fingers in their noses.  I do not exaggerate.

Proposed billboard:  Pick A Lane, Not Your Nose.  Hmm.  Needs work.

I wonder if there’s scientific basis to this.  That maybe when Grandpa hauls out a booger from his left nostril, it upsets the delicate balance between his hairy ears, and he starts listing to the right, taking the car with him.  And vice versa.

I’m right next to one old coot, doing about 40 on Sheridan Street, and in seconds he’s halved the distance between us.  I glare over and there he is, eyes glazed, poking away knuckle-deep: I half expect to see a mucous-coated fingertip emerge from his eye socket.  I swerve away and blow my horn, but he’s oblivious, dazzled, no doubt, by the gold nuggets he’d mined.

It’s pretty disgusting no matter how you frame it.  What gives with these folks — are they unaware of their display, or maybe they just don’t give a shit?

Many years ago I found myself on an inter-urban bus, traveling from Cleveland to Columbus.  I can’t read on a moving vehicle without getting carsick, so I just stared out the window.  On a bus, you sit up much higher than an automobile, giving me  a view straight down at passing traffic.  Three out of five male drivers who passed by had their hands in their crotches, hustling their nuts.  It didn’t seem to matter if they were alone, either.

Many years later I had the opportunity to mention this observation to a couple of professional bus drivers.  They chuckled.  “You ain’t seen nothing,” they told me, “until you drive around a college town.  Some of those windshields need wipers on the inside.”

Why rent a room when you can go mobile, I guess.  Anyhow, from that perspective, maybe I shouldn’t complain about geezers picking their noses.  They could be, well, let’s drop it.  Eew.