Fun_People Archive
2 Oct
On Driving

Content-Type: text/plain
Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2)
From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed,  2 Oct 96 13:11:13 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: On Driving

Forwarded-by: Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>
From: "Keith's Mostly Clean Humor & Weird List" <KSullivan@worldnet.att.net>

    HOW TO DETERMINE A DRIVER'S HOME TOWN

One hand on wheel, one hand on horn:  New York

One hand on wheel, one finger out window:  Chicago

One hand on wheel, one hand on newspaper, foot solidly on accelerator:  Boston

One hand on wheel, one hand cradling cell phone in lap, brick on
accelerator:  California*

   * with gun also in lap:  L.A.

Both hands on top of wheel, one foot on brake, watching pedestrians cross
against the light:  San Francisco

One hand on the wheel, one hand drumming (with drum stick) on the dash
board, Lap top on top of the Dashboard, left foot tapping, right foot on the
accelerator, head bobbing from side to side:  Silicon Valley, listening to KEZR

Both hands on wheel, eyes shut, both feet on brake, quivering in terror:
Ohio, but driving in Boston.

Both hands in air, gesturing, both feet on accelerator, head turned to talk
to someone in back seat:  Italy

Both hands praying to Gates, knee on wheel, cradling cell phone in lap, foot
on brake, mind on Win95 GUI:  Seattle

Both hands on steering wheel in a relaxed posture, eyes constantly checking
the rearview mirror to watch for visible emissions from their own or
another's car:  Colorado

One hand on steering wheel, yelling obscenities, the other hand waving a gun
out the window and firing repeatedly, keeping a careful eye out for
landmarks along the way so as to be able to come back and pick up any
bullets that didn't hit other motorists so as not to litter:  Colorado
resident on spotting a car with New York plates.

Rajesh Vaidheeswarran <rv@fore.com> [rec.humor.funny]
_____________________________________________________________________________


DRIVING IN PRINCETON

There is a simple method of achieving the right state of mind for driving
in Princeton.  Before you start your car for the first time, sit in the
driver's seat, hold the steering wheel, and think the following:  "I AM THE
ONLY DRIVER ON THE ROAD AND MINE IS THE ONLY CAR."  It may be hard to
believe, especially after you have seen Nassau during the late afternoon,
or on Sunday morning, but thousands of Princeton drivers believe it and so
can you.  A Princeton driver's reaction to any encounter with another
vehicle is, first, stunned disbelief, then outrage.  You don't have a chance
unless you can match this faith.  It isn't enough to say you are the only
driver, or to think it -- you've got to believe it.  Remember, your car is
THE CAR; all others are aberrations in the Divine scheme.

THE LAW.  In Princeton, as elsewhere, there are laws about streets, maximum
permissible speeds, which side of the street you can drive on, and so forth.
In Princeton, however, these laws exist only as tests of character and
self-esteem.  Stopping at a stop sign, for example, is prima facia evidence
that the driver is, if male, a cuckold or, if female, frigid.  Contrarily,
driving through a stop sign is proof not that you are virile or fertile,
but that you are a person of consequence.  This is why the Princeton driver
who gets a ticket gets red in the face, swears, wrings his hands and beats
his forehead with his fists, and this is why people come out of nearby shops
to snicker and point at him.  It isn't the fine, which is ridiculously low,
nor the inconvenience -- for most offenses you simply pay the cop and he
gives you a receipt -- but the implication that he is, after all, not quite
important enough to drive the wrong way down a one-way street.  Remember,
therefore, signs, laws and the commands of the traffic policemen are for
the lowly and mean-spirited.  Every Princetonian's dearest desire is to be
the exception to the rule -- any rule.  The only place he can do it
regularly is in his car.

THE CITY STREETS.  The basic rule of driving in Princeton is -- force your
car as far as it will go into any opening in the traffic.  It is this rule
which produces the famous Nassau-Washington Four-Way Deadlock.  Sharp study
of this phenomenon suggests that the Deadlock or Degenerate can be broken
if any one of the cars backs up.  That brings us to another important point
about Princeton driving.  You can't back up.  You can't because there is
another car right behind you.  If you could back up, and did, you would
become the object of ridicule, for backing up breaks the basic driving rule
and suggests a want of spirit.  The impossibility of backing up accounts
for some of the difficulty you will have in parking.  Aside from the fact
that there isn't anywhere to park, you will find that when you try to
parallel park by stopping just beyond the vacant space and backing into it,
you can't because that fellow is still right behind you, blowing his horn
impatiently.  You point at the parking place, make gestures indicating that
you only want to park.  He blows his horn.  You can give up and drive on or
you can get out and go back and try to get him to let you park.  This can
be done by shouting Personal Abuse in the window of his car.

One of these things will happen:

(1)  He may stare straight ahead and go on blowing his horn (if this
happens, you're whipped, for no one can out-bluff a Princeton driver);

(2) He may shout Personal Abuse back at you;

(3) He may, especially on narrow streets like Spring and Tulane, where honor
is all-important, get out of his car and kill you.  The parking problem
created by the backing up problem creates the Right Lane Horror.  AT NO TIME
SHOULD YOU DRIVE IN THE RIGHT LANE.  One reason is that Princetonians
usually drive head-first into parking spaces.  Thus, every third or fourth
parked car has its tail-end sticking out into traffic, making the right lane
a narrow winding lane.  Unfortunately, the center lane has its hazards, too
-- the right lane drivers swerving in and out of the center lane as they
steer around the sterns of half- parked and double-parked cars.
Double-parked cars run two to a block north of Nassau but only one to a
block south of Nassau.  Princetonians double park only in four lane streets;
in six lane streets they triple park.  Right lane driving is further
complicated by the Princeton style of entering a side street by driving
halfway into the first lane of traffic and then looking.

The way to deal with Lane-Swervers and Cross-Creepers is to blow your horn
and accelerate around them.  If you make a careful in-lane stop when your
lane is invaded, you not only expose your social and sexual inadequacies,
but you may never get moving again, since you also mark yourself as a
weakling whom anyone can challenge with impunity.  While performing these
dangerous gyrations, it is imperative to blow your horn.  The more risky
the maneuver, the more imperiously you must hoot, for all Princeton drivers
accept the axiom that anything you do while blowing your horn is sacred.
(Horn blowing, incidentally, except in cases of serious danger, is against
the law on every street in Princeton.)  Remember that one-way streets in
Princeton are NOT one way.  To begin with, a driver who has a block or less
to go realizes that, when they put up the signs, they were not thinking of
cases like his.  He drives it the wrong way, going full throttle to get it
over with quickly and to prove that he really is in a terrible hurry. More
importantly, however, Princeton one-way streets always have a lane for going
the wrong way.  It is reserved for students and the like and is always full
of students and the like, producing the TWO-WAY ONE-WAY street which, in
turn, produces law suits, pedestrian fatalities, and hysterical Princeton
drivers.

Chris <cwang@detour.com>

© 1996 Peter Langston