headlights and highways

Let me just begin this blog by mentioning how nice I have found the English people to be. It's much easier to get a smile in London than in NY. Everybody always seems happy to help with directions and pleasant to talk to. That being said, as nice as they are to interact with, they're not very nice on the road. And by 'not very nice', I mean pricks ('pricks' being interchangeable with any of George Carlin's 7 words you can't use on t.v. or radio or a word that rhymes with pricks but starts with a 'd'. Or a hyphanated word that doesn't rhyme with pricks but starts with 'M' and rhymes with 'ducker'). Now, I try not to judge a whole group of people based on one or two isolated incidents. How much would people like Presidents if they judged them solely on, oh, I don't know, Bill Clinton relieving some stress with a good cigar or two? Or people wouldn't like Congress if they only looked at the fact that a large majority of them act solely for personal benefit, take bribes, enact Pork Barrel spending, squeeze hidden earmarks into nearly every single piece of legislation, or have extra-marital affairs as a general rule? Okay, bad example.- Wait, did I just categorize the social and moral leaders of our country?
Again, sorry for the digression, but if this isn't the first of my blogs that you've read, you're probably used to it by now.
I was telling you that I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. And believe me, with London drivers I have. Doesn't matter. They're not nice on the road. My cousin told me about how she was getting into a cab and a biker (don't get me started on bikers not following the rules of the road and then asking vehicles to respect their presence. I drove a cab in Charleston and I can't tell you how many bike-taxi's or bikers I almost hit because they didn't stop at a red-light, or a stop sign, or yeild. Let's just say I've seen them commit almost any and all traffic violations you could think of.) So this biker, as she's getting in the cab decides that he's not going to wait behind the cab or even go around the cab. He's going to attempt to bike in between the cab (open-doored) my cousin and the curb. And when he almost takes a spill as a result, he stops on his bike, turns around and calls her a dirty British name. What? That's like when I was a Junior in high school and I asked a girl (no names but it rhymes with 'mean' and starts with 'coll') to the prom. She said yes to me. A day later some dude asks her. She decides to go with him and dumps me instead .Then he tells me he wants to fight me. What? Didn't you just steal my date? I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be wanting to fight you. Am I not getting something?

One more relevant story, then I'll continue with my point- I was about 14 and was having a few greivences with my travel-team baseball coach. Not anything huge, but we each knew that we weren't particularly fond of the other. I'm warming up (taking some swings) in-between innings. I'm swinging maybe three feet from the dugout fence. The coach has to go talk to the ump. So instead of taking the completely uninhibited space on the otherside of myself and the rest of the whole freaking field (I think he probably had around 300 feet from me to the left field wall), he decides to try to go between me and the dugout. Well, when I nail him right in the arm, what do you expect? On his way falling down to the ground in what I can only imagine as an overwhelming and intolerable amount of pain, this guy has the balls (nuts, cahones, gaul, audacity) to point at me mid-air and shout, 'You did that on purpose'. Well, anybody dumb enough to take the road between hell and the devil when the other path is lined with fluffy freaking marshmellows, angels, and supermodels deserves to get hit. Would I ever actually intentionally strike somebody with a metal bat (well, actually there was an incident when a coach ran at my father for calling him 'Bush League' and I grabbed a bat and ran after him, but luckily the police officer on-site was able to grab my shoulder and offer me a ride to the station, but that's neither here nor there- and I was...well, I was going to say young, but I was actually 14). The answer, however, is that unless a direct family member is in immediate peril, I'd never intentionally hit somebody with a bat. But did he deserve it based on stupidity? I'll let you answer that for yourself, but take my tone and a few solid winks for clue as to how I really feel.

Back to the lecture at hand. We took a cab home a few nights ago from that bar. A pedestrian woman crosses the street. The cab almost runs into her. He stops the car, rolls down the window and cusses her out. Continues driving and continues to cuss (to himself) about the girl he almost killed. The same thing happened with a motorcyclist almost hitting a dude on a bridge the other day. Anybody catching a theme here? Do these motorists realize that they're not the one's that are going to be in the hospital with internal bleeding and multiple head wounds? That at the worst they might have to have some body-work for their car, while the unlucky ped will need extensive body-work for his, uh,...actual freaking body?

I blame this aggression on the afternoon tea. I think they should switch to decalf. But riddle me this Batman. I understand why we have yellow lights before the switch from Green to Red. I mean, it gives cars warning so they can slow down (or in pretty much the case of any American with an actual place to be, speed up- exclude Congress during the worst recession since the Great Depression, b/c apparently they have time to take a vacation and give themselves a pay raise. But why in bloody (yes, I know, it's appropriate b/c I'm in England and I said 'bloody')...why in bloody hell would you give the stationary cars a Yellow light signaling to them that the light is about to turn green. Do they not gun it enough right off the block as it is? I'm sure you're racking your brain on this one, so let me help you out. It's so these pissed off drivers can have an even better shot at nailing an unlucky pedestrian. Say you're crossing the street and the light turns green. Well, you probably have time to finish crossing because the other drivers didn't know the light was turning and they have to take a second to notice the change, and then react to said change. But no. If you tell the drivers, 'hey your light is about to turn Green. Please rev your engine and gun it like you just got off your weekly weigh in at Weight Watchers and there's a two for one McRib combo running for the weekend.' If you do this, those pedestrians in the middle of the road have absolutely no chance because by the time the light turns green the cars are averaging twenty and they're hitting the intersection at around 45. Way to go Parliament.

Well, tonight, as you might infer, I was almost hit by a car. And when I say 'almost', I mean, 'I was really freaking close to getting rocked by the cab.' (Parent's, please don't freak out). They simply don't stop for you. I think in London they actually do get points for hitting people. These people take your crossing the street in front of their car as a personal insult. I mean really, I'm crossing the public roadway and I don't even have a vehicle. It's obviously going to take me a while to get to where I'm going. Just let me cross. It's not like I'm poaching venison in your private Wood (Again, I know, it works out beautifully because Robin Hood was English, and was caught in the Evil Sherriff's forest, blah, blah, blah).
My cousin, and I'm not blaming her at all because I'm a big enough boy to make my own decisions and should look out for myself, decided to walk into an intersection with the big red flashing 'Don't Walk' hand of the lord trying to send us a sign. Well I followed her into the intersection and when the light turned green, you guessed it. Instead of trying to avoid a car that was just accelerating, I was face to face with the English version of 'The Fast and the Furious: Piccadilly Rage'. Now, living in the country I know quite well what it's like to be the headlights. But I found out for the first time tonight what it's like to be the deer. You know that 'oh shit' look in the deer's eyes just before they sprint out of the middle of the road? Yup, they're actually saying to themselves, 'oh shit'. There's no question. Absolutely and unquestionably, the only possible thought that you (or the deer) have time for is 'oh shit'. You know how fast those deer are able to move out of the way? Well, so would you if you had a ton of metal screaming down you're throat at 45 mph. Call me a gazelle because I took one step and jumped my ass back on to the sidewalk from the middle of the intersection. Judging by that leap, I should have done track and field. I've learned my lesson- don't mess with the cabbies. They have nothing to live for, and if you leave it up to them, neither do you.

Sincerely (and thankfully still here),

Jay.