Mondayitis
Paul Ritchie posted in News on April 3rd, 2006
I just thought I’d tell you about my adventures in peak hour traffic going home from work on a stinking hot afternoon on a Monday.
Four lanes of bumper to bumper traffic going absolutely nowhere and even with the air conditioner on, the sun coming through the windows is making every square nanometer of exposed skin morph into pork crackling while I listen to it.
It’s days like this, except there has never been a day like this, I feel like just getting out of the car, finding the nearest McDonalds and comparing my burger with the one in the picture on the wall over the high school drop-out’s head.
But, of course, I don’t because (among other reasons) I’m not Michael Douglas.
But the stereo is noticeably unfriendly. My favorite tracks are marvelous when I’m driving, I could listen to them for ever. When I’m driving. When the only thing moving is the heat haze from the tops of the endless otherwise stationary river of cars in front of me, my favorite tape starts to give me the unmistakably sinister impression of conspiring with the traffic and Ra the dashboard splitting sun god to mock me as I slowly broil in my own perspiration.
The alternative is listening to KRUD Yet 99.9 FM where the dj who thinks he’s it and a bit reminds me it’s hot outside and a bad day to be stuck in traffic, but I should stay tuned because coming up there is going to be 20 minutes of ad-free hit music courtesy of Burnham, Black & Ashe Barbecues, the hottest shots in the cook-out business. That’s right, no ads, but they’re going to tell me loudly and with as much sincerity as a “Welcome” sign on the door of Slickfingered Sam’s Clip Joint that this is 20 minutes ad free until I’m begging for ads to break the monotony of being told it’s ad free so many times.
Despair sets in and as my eyes wander, movement in the rear view mirror catches my eye and my sensibilities are assailed with the realization the guy in the car behind me has his index finger buried two knuckles deep in his left nostril and it looks like he’s trying to tighten a loose screw or adjust the height of his left eyebrow.
Dear God, no.
Stuck in traffic, heat haze threatening to hypnotize me into a coma, an autolobotomist behind me trying to disembowel his head, hits coming out of the radio that I’ve never heard before in my life (ad free) my tape even less attractive, with mounting despair, I turn the air-con fan to maximum and stereo off altogether. It’s bad enough having one station play song after song of obscure rubbish interspersed with Fozzie Bear on crystal meth and extreme smugness pills, but station surfing the radio is worse than channel surfing the television.
Over the dull hum of my car’s motor, I can hear the dull thudding of the stereo coming from the car next to me. Naturally, I cast my eyes in the direction of the thumpity thump and there’s a mid to late 40s something guy tapping the steering wheel gently in sync with the beat. I think it slowly dawns on me because of the difficulty I am having coping with this nightmare I’m living. Had I been relaxed, it would have struck me as fairly funny. The guy is tapping merrily away to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”
How sweet.
“And that was the latest chart topper from the new grunge band Avril Lavigne Eats Worms with “Fry Your Eyeballs”, and watch out for the new CD coming out on Thursday at your local Rocksnot Music store. You’re listening to K, R U Dead Yet, it’s 99.9 degrees outside and a cool 65 in the studio as we rock your afternoon on the way home with 20 minutes of back to back hits, ad free….”
I can hear that from the car to my left. The girl with a purple stripe in her hair and 16 bits of metal in her face starts fighting with her seat belt for permission to headbutt the steering wheel to the next ‘hit’ to be totally forgotten in 3 short weeks.
(I think the guy behind me has just brought forth a nose monument big enough to have its own social security number.)
In my distraction, some jerk has squeezed their stationwagon into the space in front of me.
Just when I think things couldn’t possibly get worse, there are two kids sitting in those seats that face backwards. They’re staring straight at me. This just isn’t fair. Nobody offends God that badly. Not by error or omission anyway. I must somehow change lanes like 5 minutes ago.
The headbanger chick next to me on one side has edged up to within one quarter of an inch from the back of the guy in front of her. Well that must have been pure chance. The middle aged woman in drag on the other side of me - the one pretending to be a man listening to “I Will Survive” on repeat - is trying not let anyone else know she’s tending her eyebrows in the mirror. The facial expression, however, is a dead giveaway. It’s the same look I make when I’m eating something that’s way too hot and I think going “Huhhh Huhhh” is somehow going to save the top of my mouth from third degree burns.
Perhaps if I smile nicely and express my interest in getting my car into her lane, she might just be accomodating of my need. If only she’d leave her face alone so I could catch her eye.
The kids stare blankly. Maybe they’re just convincing looking manequins.
The guy picking winners behind me appears to be thinking he’s giving birth to twins, or he’s found a baseball in there…
The psychedelic headbanging android woman next to me continues to go completely nuts and…
I just realized I’ve left my ThinkPad at the office and I need to pee.
In 35 minutes, I appear to have traveled the best part of a mile, though it feels more like 17 feet.
There’s an exit not 100 yards ahead and I put my indicator on. It’s amazing how many trees a man notices when he can’t actually get to one.
But I’m sure I have an empty soft drink bottle on the floor behind the passenger’s seat amongst the burger wrappers, chip packets and Coke cans.
So, nonchantly I begin the back seat fish. Easing down in my seat slightly, looking at anything but the two kids in front, my hand lights on several items of indeterminate nature before finding that blessed cylinder of plastic which I bring to the front. The kids continue to stare at me but they can’t see what I have in my hand. Headbanger girl hasn’t missed a beat and the she-man has produced a pair of tweezers and a compact mirror and is tending his/her eyebrows with more conviction now. God only knows what the nasal fruit picker behind me is doing, I’m too disgusted to look and morbidly fascinated with what I’m about to do next.
I remove the lid from my soft drink bottle, cursing the fact I didn’t get one of those sports drinks with the big opening. It’s just one of those half inch jobs. Too bad. Still slouching and trying to look nonchalant, I suck in my guts and ease the lidless bottle into my trousers and down my right leg.
The traffic inches forward and the make-up man has graciously allowed me to get in front of him. Either that or she/he wasn’t looking. I take advantage of the space, nevertheless. However, tactically, this was a bad move. Those kids are now next to me, they’re still eyeing me steadfastly and it doesn’t appear they’ve so much as blinked for the last 12 minutes.
I have an empty soft drink bottle in my pants and it’s getting to the stage I really need to get a connection happening with it before I have a single vehicle accident whilst stationary in traffic. So I edge close into the door to obscure any activity from their view. Now I’m ready to start the docking manouevres.
Yes, there’s the top of the bottle, now hold steady. For the benefit of those two guards, I give the impression I’m listening to classical music allowing myself to get completely relaxed. They can’t see what my other hand is doing and I doubt they can see the sweat building on my brow.
It’s gotta be an exact fit though or else I’ll flood the driver’s seat of the car, so with much prodding and poking and twisting to make absolutely sure I’m in the right place, I’m as satisfied as I can be that all is well and, to the relief of my lower abdomen, I let it rip. Success! I can hear the bottle filling.
Fast.
Um… yeah, how full before it overflows?
Can’t wait to find out, time to shut off the flow and so with what amounts to super human strength, I clench every muscle in my body. Hell, even my ears have pinned themselves back with the strain. Finally it’s over.
Now all that remains is to get the bottle out of my pants without spilling it. I was slightly slouched in my seat before, but in order to get the bottle to a reasonable level of perpendicularity, I had to sort of arch up in the middle so it could fit sort of underneath me a bit. It meant I had to jam my foot into the brake pedal, but I wasn’t going anywhere anyway so that didn’t matter. All of a sudden, we are moving again and I have to do something about it. Jamming my left leg into the floor to hold myself up, I bend my right knee slightly to ease the pressure on the brake pedal. The trouble is, it looks like I’m trying to get a basketball out from underneath me and those two kids are right up next to me now and they might as well be sitting next to me.
I’ve got one hand on that bottle but that’s not what it looks like from their point of view, and they appear to have told their mother in much lurid language. She’s got the window down and is craning out of it screaming some sort of barrage of obscenities at me and that’s attracted the attention of everyone else as well. The whole world, it seems, is looking at me all arched up in the driver’s seat of my car with my hand gripping an unholy bulge in the front of my pants.
I can’t move that bottle quickly and safely in this condition, there’s only one thing for it before I get to panic stations, and that’s to get the lid back on it while it’s still in there.
So I grab the lid, throw my other hand inside my pants and fumble for the top of the bottle which I’m holding from the outside. The kids are ecstatic - they’ve busted a pervert. Their mother is on her cellphone screaming at it, and looking at me. I’ve dropped the damn lid.
I’m still gripping the top of the bottle with my right hand, but I’ve had to reach around the back of me to find that wretched lid and that involved a lot of squirming on my part, the sweat is now running down my forehead and dripping off my nose. Finally I find the lid, withdraw my arm from the back, shove it back down the front and manage to secure the bottle. Sod it, it can just stay where it is until I’m somewhere a lot more private. After that several minutes of frantic activity, I let my body relax completely so I can get on with the task of getting myself home. I grab a napkin from the glove compartment and wipe my brow. I even light up a cigarette.
Those kids look serious now. Their fun appears to be over and their mother is ready to chew a hole in my car to tear me limb from limb. For twenty minutes as we crawl along the highway, that woman is cursing me. She didn’t get out of her car and actually try to assault me though, maybe she thought I might have a gun - who knows.
I’m at a turn off point and I take it. In the blessed mercy of a side street, I remove the bottle from my pants and turn the radio on and they’re telling motorists to be on the lookout for a bronze Ford Taurus with MY LICENSE PLATE, that the police are going to want to talk to me about some indecent behavior involving her two kids.
WTF?
In a moment of outrage, I call the radio station and tell them straight up, I was peeing in a bottle I had stuffed down my trousers, and if they like, I’ll mail it to them. A shortish conversation ensues during which the person on the other end finds much about which to be amused and I think finally I can make the rest of my journey home in relative peace and quiet. Ten minutes later, as I pull into my driveway, a new broadcast goes out to the effect of the conversation I had with the operator at the radio station and I’m made out to be the ultimate in unfortunate fools.
At least I’m not a criminal pervert anymore. That’s one thing. I just wonder what the people at work are going to say to me the next day.
Oh, and the cause of the traffic hold-up? A cute blonde broke down in her Corvette and 28 guys stopped to help her put water in her radiator. Who said chivalry is dead…
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