I think I hate driving.

I used to love driving. Freedom from the world, all that power at my fingertips, etc.; but, now I find it just mostly annoying. I’m sure this is partly due to the fact that my truck is about two and a half wind gusts away from becoming a heap of twisted metal parts with no discernible function; save perhaps, manufacturing tetanus, and, leeching rust into the groundwater.

It also turns out that I hate going places.

Please don’t misunderstand, I like the idea of being somewhere (be it club, bar, restaurant, bathroom, etc); and I love being there when I get there. It’s just the actual process of transporting my carcass that’s beginning to bother me. It seems like such a waste of time sitting in a car, running, flying, whatever, to my destination, especially when I so clearly wanted to be there 10 minutes ago. It would be so much more convenient if I could be instantaneously teleported a la Star Trek, or, more correctly, if my destination could be transported to me (imagine the convenience, I wouldn’t even have to put on pants!).

You’ll understand, now, how annoyed I must have been on the drive into work today. I was already running late as the result of an especially poignant episode of MASH, when getting on Central Expressway (a weird freeway that’s not a freeway here in Silicon Valley), I was slowed to a near halt by a Mercedes in front of me.

“Hmmm,” I thought, ” must be a lot of traffic on Central this morning. Looking over my shoulder I saw that the merge-way was abundantly clear. Clenching fists in constrained range I said aloud, “Go…go…go…gogogogogogogo!” and still nothing. Taking a closer look at the Mercedes, I saw the driver applying mascara in her rear-view mirror.

breath…1…2…3…4…

honk!

Startled expressions of embarrassment and bewilderment, ingrained attempt to go back and finish the spackling honk! honk! expletives let fly. Stupidity and danger to self realized, drive on, drive on… sigh