A Plea To End Life Threatening Boredom

I drive a 2006 Mazda MX-5 (or Miata) which I absolutely adore, sexual ambiguity be damned. But I will save a thoroughly comprehensive ode to the utter joy factory that is “Mia” (I know, 2 points to Joe for creativity) for another time. In this moment, I shall focus on something utterly different. Something ugly and menacing both in its ability to kill and its propensity to kill with the most torturous of all methods: boredom…


So Mia is obviously a lightweight. In the event of a collision against almost all other vehicles, I would be foolish to think that the airbags are going to save me like a Royce Gracie submission maneuver in the early days of the UFC. No, in the automotive world, for better or worse, size matters, and against something like this GMC Whatever (Ok, fine, I think it's called an "Envoy," but nobody cares anyway), my best option is to avoid , which, lucky for me, my car is quite adept at doing. Driving on the freeways in Los Angeles in a Miata is not for the faint of heart. I am ALWAYS on the defensive, reminding myself that the best defense in my situation truly is a good offense, despite how much I hate that saying and Bill Walton for that matter. My only viable option is to aggressively avoid a collision with trucks, SUVs, and ever growing not-so-minivans, all of which combine to comprise what seems like the majority of vehicles on the road. My daily commute is a life or death game of Frogger.

So alright, I admit that I signed myself up for this. I wanted the small, nimble car. Maybe it’s because I am 5’8” and 135lbs and have small man complex. Yes, I grew up fantasizing about dominating brutishly built bully schoolmates by Kung Fu-ing their asses, ending the furious flurry of fists and feet with a dramatic shriek and a death touch, but only to one unlucky soul, sending a clear message to the others. And of course, all of this occurs in front of the ladies, who just happen to secretly love Kung Fu. As you might have guessed, I never came close to acting on that dream. Instead, I joined the tennis team and developed thumb calluses playing Street Fighter II. But I am a grown man now. I realize that in this game, “Game Over” does not automatically mean a “Play Again” option. So I scheme. I develop strategy. If I see an inattentive driver on his/her cell phone, I immediately start surveying the situation for all possible outs in case that person starts to drive as stupid as they look. I look to pass. I look to get away…as far as possible, especially if this person is behind me, and even more so if this person is driving a substantially larger car with worse brakes, which in my case, is pretty much always the case. I happen to know that my car stops from 60-0mph in 116ft. I also happen to know that most trucks and many SUV’s stop from 60-0mph in roughly 140-150ft (if it’s an American model, I tack on an extra 10 feet just for good measure). That means if I’m being tailed by a perfectly alert driver of one of these cars at 60mph (who happens to have superhuman reflexes), they must be roughly 35 feet behind me prior to when I brake to avoid Big Foot-ing me, ending these intermittent blog entries, and completely nullifying 7 coats of meticulously applied Zaino product. For every second that tailing driver waits to brake, another 88ft is added to the required distance for collision avoidance. What this means on the freeway is that any idiot behind me driving alone in an over-sized gas guzzler with the radio blaring while screaming at a cell phone (which sadly is most drivers during rush hour) should give him/herself at least a 200 foot buffer to process the situation and mash that Tempur-Pedic sponge of a brake pedal. But of course, in LA, tailgaters are as ubiquitous as…well… American-made SUV’s with bad brakes. It’s a symbolic picture of what some tragically believe to be the American way: “I’m bigger, so I’m entitled to be as stupid and selfish as I want, and you better get used to it until you get as fat and ignorant as I am, and then we’ll mud wrestle each other for the right to be king of all that is crude and embarrassing to anyone outside our bacon-wrapped bubble…and if that doesn’t work, we’ll just have to shoot each other.” I support a different kind of America, the one that wrote in the right to bear arms not to bully others, but to defend itself against the rule of any tyrannical government within its own borders. But alas, I have made a digression of the worst kind. Consider my political soap box burned and under 24 hour surveillance. So back to the issue at hand. This is a plea to all of you out there whose vehicles move like a worn out Sumo wrestler: Let’s a make a deal. You stop mad-dogging me, and I shall refrain from giving you the finger for polluting twice the air, taking up twice the space, and making the road a generally unsafe place for those of us who actually like to drive.