Forget the Marriage Amendment, President Bush. Forget the Torture Amendment, Senator McCain. Forget Campaign Reform Legislation, Congress. Forget overturning Roe vs. Wade, Pat Robertson. Forget all that stuff. Scrap it. We need to come together and focus on one thing and one thing only: passing an amendment to the Constitution making the Alternating Traffic Merge the law of the land. The time is now before this menace to our liberty dents another fender.
In my mind no one is more despicable, more contemptible, or more dastardly than a motorist who refuses to alternate when two lanes merge to one. They are worse than the Line-Cutter-Inners. They are lower than those two-bit, make-money-with-tiny-ads dirt bags. Why, they are so bad that they are directly responsible for holding up the Rapture. Can you imagine the merge issues at heaven’s gate? All those so called Christians cutting each other off without paying attention to the civil rules of alternating.
And as far as the penalty for breaking this law, it must be quick and severe. I’m thinking a first conviction should come with a mandatory five year sentence, no probation; a second conviction gets Old Sparky or the Kevorkian Cocktail. I’m not fooling around here.
Well this noteworthy amendment idea of mine didn’t come without cause. Last night it happened to me again and it was the last straw.
After another satisfying dinner at Po Restaurant in The Village, I was returning to New Jersey from Manhattan via a network of carbon monoxide choked arteries leading to the Holland tunnel, where as many as a half dozen vehicle packed avenues, three lanes wide, twist and turn and squeeze into a two lane hole burrowed into the earth and under the Hudson River. Navigating this labyrinth of potholed streets is a conundrum with no smarty pants answer. In addition, there is little if any advantage gained by cheating. At the end of a nice relaxing meal, it is merely a test of skillful patience. And if motorists abide by the unwritten rule of the “alternating traffic merge”, it can be civil and as effortless as zipping up your fly.
And yet there I was in the final throes of my second to last merge; four already behind me incident free; the gaping mouth of the tunnel beckoning me no more than twenty yards away; and this sub-human, lined up next to me, would not let me take my turn in the merge. He was blocking me out; jamming the zipper.
It started out innocently enough, my front bumper the normal three inches ahead of his, my side panel a safe foot away from touching him. I initiated the usual inch turn into the narrowing lane. Everything seemed fine. But I could see with my highly developed peripheral vision that he was not sliding back. He wasn’t budging an inch.
I thought okay he is just sizing me up. No problem. In the execution of the alternating traffic merge maneuver, a hesitant vehicle is a passed vehicle. That is a well known and quite acceptable deviation from accepted etiquette. So all I needed to do was keep moving forward, maintaining the inch squeeze and he’d soon get the message that I was no pushover and eventually retreat into his acceptable position.
But no! This empty-skull idiot was not backing away. At this point, I began yelling at my faceless enemy in a stream of expletive tongues, as if overcome by an unexplainable onslaught of Turrets Syndrome. The sudden loud vulgar barrage wrestled the attention of my passengers, three generations of women, away from iPods, singing and snoring. They instinctively clutched their valuables and leaned away from the car windows, the oldest matriarch joining me in verbal combat, while the middle one pleaded with me to stop the insanity (it was her new pearl white unblemished Murano I was driving).
But I was in mortal fender to fender combat. The survival of human civility was in the balance. I had to overtake this f-head; squash him like a grape. I lurched two inches, turned in another inch. He bolted up three inches. My front fender was losing precious ground. I momentarily picked up a little lost ground but the road was closing in fast. Another miraculous burst of unfettered four letter words flew off my tongue in a silky smooth tapestry of crudity, the likes of which had not been bellowed from my lips before. The teenage daughter remarked with a hint of entertained respect how she has never heard me speak so graphically. I vacantly apologized to all before venting my next vulgar volley.
Then it happened. My auto adversary jumped forward, snarling his impact proof bumper past mine, his side mirror snapping against his door panel as it hit my passenger side mirror. There was a final desperate plea by my vehicle’s panicked owner to back off. After echoing a subdued, defeated “fine” throughout the cabin, I backed off, fell in line behind the bastard, and prepared for the last merge, which proceeded without incident.
As I cruised by the soot crusted tiles of the two lane pipeline, my comrades fell back into an uneasy serenity, returning to the comfort of their previous activities they had been engaged in before being so rudely interrupted. As for me, I was hypnotized by the slow syncopated strobe effect from the glow of the passing drab yellow tunnel lights, as I stared with unblinking focus at the car two ahead, the position that was rightfully mine. At some point I fantasized blowing up his tires by pulling up next him and shooting them out with tank piercing rounds fired from machine guns hidden in my wheel wells. As I drifted deeper into the tunnel trance, my thoughts turned more violent, more disturbing, thinking it possible for me to beat every person in his car to a bloody pulp; young, old, women, children, pets, bobble-head dollsquite a surreal feat I might add given my untested fighting skills and penchant for writing poetry.
When we crawled back out of the tunnel, the road widened immediately to five lanes. Satan’s sedan sputtered off to the left where he was immediately pinched in by a truck pulling out of a side road. I veered off to the right like a rocket, leaving the pathetic lout in my dust in less than ten yards from the tunnel exit. It was a small but empty victory for me.
And I think that is the point. Where is the triumph in blocking a merge? It’s not like these scoundrels are going to get anywhere any faster. There is no advantage. So what is it? Why do some people insist on doing this? Is it some kind of criminal gene that floats in and out of our human DNA universe, waiting to be triggered by sunspots perhaps or possibly secret radio signals from FM Lite? Personally, I think their behavior is no different from serial killingyou know, minus the dead people and stuff.
Well whatever causes one to act so insidiously, I do know this, the world would be a whole lot better off if we could round these psychopaths up and feed them to the fishes. But this is America and we can’t do something like that without laws; that is, everyone except the President. He doesn’t seem to need no stinkin’ laws. You’d think he’d do something about it, but he strikes me as the kind of guy who just might not alternate too. So I’m not expecting any help from him soon.
And that is exactly why I am pushing my Senators to draft and approve an amendment to the Constitution making the “alternate traffic merge” the law of the land.
Then we can start rounding up these no-good-niks for the fishes.
This article was written by humorist Robert Crane. Please visit his popular website for more the same and a few surprises.
http://www.cranelegs.com
