My Musings

PS-Ashley Rocks!

Saturday, January 11, 2003

The Yellow Light Dilemma

My least favorite part of the day occurs when the sun dips to about eye level but hasn’t set enough yet so as not to be so goddam bright. I don’t know why, but whenever the sun shines into my eyes it ticks me off like none other. This becomes a problem when I’m driving, because angry drivers who are concentrating more on fumbling with the sunshade to ensure proper protection of the eyes than on the road to ensure not wandering into oncoming traffic are bad things. To my great misfortune, I have found that this most irritating time of day occurs right around when my Saturday tennis lesson ends, so every week I am subjected to the torture of driving with the sun in my eyes. This undermines my already putrid driving skills, so today I decided to take the long way back via Brice and Livingston instead of going on the highway. Less bad stuff can go wrong if I’m going 35 miles per hour than if I’m going 65, right? Ha ha. Don’t be silly.

Two interesting things happened on the way home from tennis today. The first was that until I turned off Brice onto Livingston, I was behind a lady (well, I assume it was a lady) driving a white Jeep with the following license plate: R U PMSN2. I don’t know, I thought that was pretty funny. Well, maybe not funny, but certainly very creative. I hope if I ever get a customized plate I can come up with something more creative than just BOARASS. Maybe “I CNT DRV.” What do you guys think?

The second interesting thing occurred on Livingston. Behind me now was this military truck-looking thing, kind of like a jeep but higher off the ground. This was fine with me. I was driving along and everything was fine for a while, and then I ran into a common problem. I’m sure all you drivers out there have experienced what I like to call “The Yellow Light Dilemma.” Basically, it’s when you’re driving along towards an intersection, and the light is green, and everything is fine and everybody is happy, but then that stupid retarded light goes and screws it all up by turning yellow, tearing to smithereens your heretofore peaceful, bucolic existence and forcing you to think fast. On the one hand, you don’t want to slow down; you want to keep going. But on the other hand, you don’t want to die, and you don’t want to get ticketed for running a red light. You gotta decide RIGHT NOW if you dash or brake. For some people this decision comes easily. Like Dan, to name one good example. Dan will always run a yellow light. Heck, Dan will run a red light if he looks and there ain’t no cars comin’. For me, though, the decision is much more difficult. I’m cautious by nature and I don’t want to break laws. I have run red lights before and it makes me feel bad.

So maybe that explains why, when I was faced with The Yellow Light Dilemma today on Livingston, I decided to stop. But as it turned out, I was going way too fast relative to my distance from the yellow light, and as the intersection approached my car with alarming alacrity despite the pressure I was putting on the brake, I figured that maybe I had made the wrong decision. Further evidence of this was how I pretty much ended up having to floor the brake in order to stop on time, and how there was this rather nasty grinding noise as I came to a very unpleasant halt. Still further evidence that I had erred became clearly visible to me when I heard the sound of tires on gravel and saw the military jeep thing pull up next to me on the right. I was in the right lane at the time, so the jeep was not, technically speaking, on the road. The driver had pulled off of it and temporarily parked his car beside me in order to avoid making a Metal & Boris Sandwich out of my car.

I’m generally pretty bad at describing my feelings, but I will try now. At that moment, I felt: really, really, dumb. REALLY dumb. UNIMAGINABLY dumb. Embarrassed, too. Julie, who for some reason takes great pleasure in the fact that my ears turn red when I blush, would be happy to note that my ears were probably purple. Proceeding as though this sort of thing happens to him all the time, the driver slipped into reverse and backed up into his former position behind me. I wanted to die. Even though it was out of my way, at the next possible light (which wasn’t yellow, thank god) I turned right to get away from any possible witnesses of the event still driving in the vicinity. Somehow I made it home alive.

Right now I would like to use this space to issue forth the following statement: if you own, or have ever owned, a military-ish type jeep vehicle thingie, and you were ever driving this vehicle in the vicinity of January 11, 2003 at about 4:45 PM down Livingston behind a dumbass in a fuchsia Subaru who put an inordinately overoptimistic amount of faith in the braking power of his car and forced you to drive off the road in order to avoid smashing his sorry ass into a patty, then I would just like you to know that I, Boris Dvorkin, am that dumbass, and I would like to apologize for having the same level of common sense as an eyeliner pencil, and I would also like to thank you for, like, not killing me.

And for those of you out there who just got your license, I would like to offer some advice: run all yellow lights. Even if they’re red. I don’t care. Also, remember the following equation: Brakes = Bad. If at all possible, remove the ones that came with your car. You’ll be better for it. Drive as recklessly as you can; drive like Dan. Yeah, you might get a ticket, or obliterate a couple of kids playing in the street while driving 89 miles an hour in a residential zone, or run into a telephone pole and die, but at least you won’t embarrass yourself. If you’re gonna be stupid, use that stupidity to run into somebody else; don’t use it to make somebody else run into you.

Right now I am thoroughly convinced that for the betterment of mankind I should never be allowed to take command of a car or a bike or a go-kart or a pair of roller blades or anything along those lines ever again. If there’s anybody out there who’s really young, like I’m thinking maybe 7 years old here, and you can’t wait to drive, or if you keep failing the drivers’ exam, or basically if you’re somebody who really wants to have a license but can’t get one, email me and we can work out a deal wherein I give you my license and you give me some "compensation," if you catch my drift. I prefer cash. You’ll have to dye your hair kind of brownish-blond and put on some glasses and maybe shave your face a little less often than you’re accustomed to, but other than that I have a very common face and I’m sure you’ll be able to impersonate me very easily. One kid at the tennis lesson today told me that I look like the Boris from the movie Goldeneye, his sole reasoning being A) we’re both named Boris, and B) we both wear glasses. This is just one example of how easy it is to look like me. I could write a whole blog entry about how all throughout my life I’ve either met people who look like me, or been told that some famous person looks like me (hmmm, I just may have to do that sometime…). So my point is, if you had my license, you could easily fool even the most hardened observer into thinking that you're the guy on the picture (unless you're a girl, in which case, yes, we may have some problems), and you could drive around with impunity until you get pulled over and they put the license through the little machine and you get imprisoned for 17 years for fraud. Like I said, email me and we’ll talk. I’m thinking maybe a good starting place for negotiations is 250 bucks. Lemme know.

.: posted by Boris 8:54 PM

Comments: Post a Comment