BUMP
I was driving through a curvy country road, when I noticed someone had spray painted the word 'bump' on a rock on the side of the road. It was written in an ornate graffiti script. It seemed out of place. I started to wonder if this was some sort of high concept art piece, or if there was some sort gang activity this far from the city. As I drove around the next curve the car ran over a pothole.
BEACH PARKING
I was looking for parking in an affluent beach town. I noticed a couple getting into a parked car and assumed they were about to leave so I turned on my hazards and waited for the car to pull out. It was a prime parking location so I did not mind waiting.
Then the oddest thing happened - nothing. The driver did not motion me to move on, nor did he start the vehicle. From what I could see he was sitting in the car. After a couple of minutes the wife got out of the car and came over to tell me that they could not find the car keys. I shrugged my shoulders and said OK. I put the car in drive and continued my search.
I couldn't help but to feel that the driver had been somehow upset by my waiting and had refused to move, although that was his intention in the first place. Maybe I'm stretching it a little, since it was an older couple in an expensive auto, but the parallels to our current political system were uncanny.
SMOG CHECK
I have an old Mercedes diesel that I fuel with bio-diesel. It has 250,000 miles on it, so occasion it's smokes. On one of these smoky occasions someone in a full sized SUV pulled up to me and yelled out "you should get a smog check". My car is beyond the smog check stage, it is much closer to the engine overhaul stage.
The irony is that, as smoky as my diesel is, the fact that I used locally sourced bio-diesel means that the ecological damage my Mercedes does is nowhere near the damage a SUV drive is doing- especially when driving on city streets.
