12 December, 2005

Tool of the day

The guy in the white Ford Bronco with the large reflective "Click It Or Ticket" sticker plastered across the rear glass and about a dozen foam balls of various designs impaled on his radio antenna. Not that I have anything against the antenna balls, and especially not the pro-seatbelt sentiment; but I'm reasonably sure his point was lost on three separate lanes full of drivers whom he variously tailgated, cut-off, and ran out of their lanes.

The 12" high "3" that shared the rear window with the seatbelt sticker probably should have been a clue.

1st Runner Up

Me, almost. I was walking from the parking structure to the building where I work and fell in behind a woman stylishly dressed in a flattering black suit. She was clicking along on spike heels, trailing a potent miasma of the sort of cloying perfume usually reserved for elderly women wearing dead animals draped around their necks.

I wanted out of her draft—and badly—so I upped my normally brisk walking pace another notch and quickly overtook her. I must have scuffed my shoe or something, because she looked back. She saw me in my jeans and sneakers, and her entire demeanor changed from Boardroom Ballbuster to Pauline in Peril.

The race was on.

Perceiving me as some lowlife scumbag wanting to relieve her of her purse, her virtue, or both, she quickened her pace. Still wanting out of her Prince Matchabelli (or whatever) fog, I quickened mine.

It didn't take long for me to overtake her, and when she didn't get mugged she reverted to Boardroom Ballbuster mode. "Sorry I'm too slow for you," she said in a tone so sulphurous that I began understood her need for aromatic camouflage.

And I thought I had a snarky streak.

Anyway, I almost... almost... responded that I was only trying to get upwind so as to avoid spewing my breakfast all over the pavement. I've been trying to do better about cleaning up my karma, so I didn't; but if I had, it would have made me Tool of the Day.

At least, until this afternoon's drive home.

1 comment:

Lou said...

She's the rude one there, friend. And paranoid!

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