Speed Kills

35 MPH is for weenies and dead people.

Yeah, call me an unamerican, communist-sympathizing, draft-dodging, lesbian-
atheist-professional-sports-hating troublemaker, but I am convinced that the
35 MPH speed limit was developed to numb the brains of the American driver
and make us all pathetic, apathetic, and copasetic to the core.

35 MPH is the driving equivalent of "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

I bet you that nothing in the universe goes 35 MPH in it's natural state. I think
it's a mutant speed of movement. In fact, it could be the "anti" speed. It's like
when anti matter meets matter. Things explode. Kind of like what happens to
me when my speed runs into 35MPG.

We've got this road here in Lime Plant City. It's a main road that leads into the
down-townless area where The Man and I live. EVERY time I happen to NEED
to take this particular stretch of road I ALWAYS get behind someone driving a
Buick LeSabre who has just left the hospital having had a quadruple lobotomy
and they JUST HAVE to drive EXACTLY 35MPH!

And so we sit there, going along so slowly, NEVER WAVERING from exactly
35 MPH, our brain cells dying and falling out the window, sprinkled along the
roadway like Hansel and Gretel's bread crumbs.

Three days later we're still there. I look in my rear view mirror and see, not the
reflection of my weary face, but a spider building a large web connecting the
mirror to the door. It's a nice web, actually. It doesn't even ruffle because
there's no breeze. We're going too slowly for a breeze.

A bird has build a nest between the base of the radio antenna and the passenger-side
windshield wiper, and is settling around her eggs. I must think of good names for the
brood when they hatch in about two weeks, at which time I estimate I'll only be about
another mile from home.

Now, don't for a minute think I get angry or impatient. No, no, no. I just set my seat
back a little further, turn on the classical station and think about how lucky all of us
are, all of us behind the LeSabre. We have this wonderful opportunity to pause and
recount our lives up to this point, our highs and lows, our thrills and defeats, lovers,
friends, family. Some of us have pulled scraps of paper, old receipts, used wads of
Kleenex from under the seats and are writing our autobiographies, or our last wills
and testaments, since we'll all be dead by the time we get home again.

When I went grocery shopping I was only 55 years old. Now, I'm 105 and I'm afraid
The Man will have taken up with some 63 year old spring chicken by the time I make
it back.

Still, the LeSabre creeps along.

I know that I could pass it. But, in Lime Plant City, the last time someone attempted
to pass another vehicle the lead driver had a stroke which resulted in an 80 car pile-up.
'Course, damage was minimal, what with the fact that the cars were only going 35 MPH!

About the time my head is rolling off it's hinges and my tongue is tired from trying to
touch the tip of my nose (and from playing other equally worthless tongue-stretching
games), the LeSabre suddenly leans over in the bicycle lane and dies.

It takes the rest of us drivers about ten minutes before our brains start synapsing again.
Then, we all pass, one after the other, staring wide-eyed, wondering, "What'll we do now?"

But now I'm in the lead. Ha Ha!

I pop good ol' Geoie into second gear and off we roar...

at 36 MPG!