In my new(er) job I have to drive around the city a LOT. I get to see all manner of interesting things that people do. Some good, some bad.
Im sitting at a red light… and I notice a guy handcuffed face down on the sidewalk. Various police officers are standing around, one is writing down what an old man with an apron is saying. A few things are strewn on the sidewalk, looks like drug addled LayingOnTheGroundManTM> tried to steal something. The perp is yelling out things like “stop kicking me!” and “police brutality!” despite the fact nobody is touching him. A soccer mom type woman comes up, takes the officers arm and starts asking why the guy was getting kicked (if you yell it, it MUST be true!). She has that “I know better than anyone” tone of voice I don’t like from nosy people. I hear her say “I don’t like the way you are treating him”. I can smell the minivan.
This was all very interesting until the guy handcuffed on the ground BIT HER ON THE LEG!
Justice.
She hopped around and swore a little and then, in what was a truly great moment, she kicked LayingOnTheGroundManTM> in the face. It looked like the cop was about to restrain her when the concentration I was giving the situation was shattered by the honking of the horn in the car behind me. The light had turned green, it was time to move on.
Sometimes I have to go down back alleys in seedy places. If you know Vancouver – imagine the alleys of Main and West Hastings. Not pretty. Not at all. Then there was the guy who was…. uhm.. “interacting” with a prostitute and gave me a double thumbs up as I drove by whilst looking for a hard to find address. An image seared in my brain, but I found the address.
Im merging onto the freeway. One of those two merge lanes that first merge into one, before merging into the “slow lane”. This is often a complicated maneuver, not because of my ability to do so, but because of the necessity of piloting around those who seemingly do not. You get the type that want to merge into the 100 km/hr zone going only 40, those that don’t find their immediate merge window and STOP. Oh how I hate the stoppers. On this particular occasion none of the usual problematic scenarios reared its ugly head, though Murphy did throw himself into the works.
One of the vans I drive for work has a real crappy mechanism to put the driver side window up and down. The crank simply is buggered, and you have to work hard to get anywhere. In the hot summer, sans air conditioning, you gotta drive with all the windows rolled down to prevent from expiring from some heat related ailment. Its a wind tunnel, basically. So Im merging onto the freeway in my Chevrolet wind tunnel, and the boss radios me on the (of all things) radio. The ONLY way to hear anything on said radio is to roll up the window, which I tried, whilst merging, and it was not going easy. Then I had the skin between my thumb and index finger on my right hand (the left was on the wheel) get stuck between that round part on the handle. This was a problem, it hindered my mobility, it hurt, and I was MERGING ONTO THE &@(#*#& FREEWAY!
So the boss is calling (twice now) on the radio, my right hand is stuck in the window crank, the window is still down, the van is a wind tunnel, Im merging using only my left hand to steer. Then I began sneezing.