Sunday, June 22, 2008

Do, or do not... there is no squirrel.

Heading out for a ride this morning, I'm coming up to an intersection. The light's green, and three cars are coming the other way, all three have their left turn signals on. The first two go, no worries, I wasn't to the intersection yet... but the third one, this older Buick, can't figure out if he wants to go or not. He slows, then starts to go, then slows, then starts to go, then slows... then finally decides he'll stop. But see, the problem is he's now come to a full stop directly in front of me, and I'm doing about 17mph straight at his door. I hit the brakes, and yell something about "make up your mind!" and ride around the back of the car. I did get the entertainment of seeing that he was an older guy, and his wife in the passenger's seat was totally freaking out. That was funny.

Anyone who has driven and seen a squirrel on the road knows that they are totally unpredictable. Even if they are mostly across the road, nothing says they won't suddenly turn around and run right back in front of your car. There's no predicting what they'll do, so you can't prepare. So now, imagine a squirrel driving a Buick... scary, huh? When it comes time to do something or not do something... make your choice, and STICK WITH IT. If the old guy had just gone when he first considered it, okay, it would have been close, but I was prepared for that. If he had just stopped and waited, that would have been just fine as well. The start/stop/start/stop/start/stop that wound up putting him directly in my path? I couldn't figure out what he was going to do and he wound up doing the very worst thing he could have.

Well, okay, running me over would have been the worst... but you know what I mean.

2 comments:

Dmitri said...

I have to say, pretty entertaining reading. And how long was the ride for you to think about the squirrel analogy? :-)

cmh said...

ha... ha... ha. :) Just after it happened, I thought to myself "it's like a squirrel wearing a two ton suit of armor". So there!