Proof (Sort of)

A few days ago I posted about how suck-tacular Portland drivers are. And I felt like there was a wee bit of blowback and disbelief about Portland drivers from my readers. From Nels (who I still worship because he thinks I’m famous) who thinks I need to chill out behind the wheel, to Qanzas (who I love because he’s gay and living in Kansas and that, in my book, deserves my love) who didn’t believe people would actually abide a law that says one needs to wait for the pedestrians to leave the crosswalk before hitting the gas.

Well, here’s proof that Portland drivers suck ass, except I realize it’s not proof at all, but rather a photo taken a minute after the situation would have made it proof.

Whatever. Here’s what happened. See that hippie in the Volvo station wagon? (Frankly, I’m surprised it wasn’t a Subaru station wagon because shitty Portland drivers love those cars.) The person in the Volvo decided to stop on a green light because there was someone on the corner waiting to walk in the crosswalk. Stopped on a green light to let someone pass.

It reminds me of graduate school when I co-taught a class on Post-modernism and we were reading some Gertrude Stein or Michael Palmer or Walter Benjamin (did you catch all that — I’m smart enough to halfway teach some kids to bullshit their way through a bunch of people who make no sense) and this guy who was a graduate student too (but not a co-teacher like I was, so he can go suck it) said, “There are no rules to this stuff, you just write what you want to write and that’s it.” And the other teacher, who actually knew about this stuff said, “You’re an idiot. There are rules to it and if there were no rules, then there’d just be chaos and what if there were no rules on the roads. We’d all run into each other and people would die.” And then I hit my head against the wall because I wanted to co-teach Creative Writing and not Post-modernism because Post-modernism is a load of shit. But I did have a huge crush on the other teacher because he was actually a journalist and he had a swing and a tree growing in his apartment and he let me open his mail, some of which was from Courtney Love. And then we got stoned and graded papers on Post-modernism, which just about sums up that semester.

Back to driving. There are rules on the road, and when hippies in station wagons (Volvo or Subaru) don’t follow them, I need to honk, and then Archer needs to shout, “FUCK” from the backseat, because he understands the gravity of someone stopping on a green light to let a pedestrian cross.

After my prolonged honking and my toddler’s cursing, the guy waved his hand to me and to the pedestrian. And the motion was like, “hey you stupid bitch, there’s a guy on the corner and he wants to cross, don’t you see him.”

And I honked more and my honking said, “Hey fuckhead, I’m going to vote for Bush and kick some poor people off welfare and personally drop a few bombs on oil rich countries, because you’re driving like a mother fucking douchebag.”

The pedestrian didn’t cross because he was a smart human being who realized that, like Post-modernism, Portland drivers need to take their pedestrians-are-the-most-important-people-on-the-road attitude, and shove up their rear ends.

And finally, the Volvo begrudgingly went.

And I drove behind him cursing the fact that I carry no baseball bat in my car and that violence is bad for kids to see and WAIT, I have my camera in my car and the only way I can properly violate this guy is take a picture of his car and post it on my blog. And because I’m pretty sure most of Portland reads my blog, if that is your car and you were on Broadway yesterday around noon, send me an email, because we’ve got some issues to work out and that involves my foot up your ass for driving like an idiot.

In other news: Archer got his cast off yesterday! YAY!