Tag Archives: Driving

You Drive Like a Sodding Slugfuck

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This post was to be entitled, “You Drive Like a Dick,” but hey–it’s the holidays.  And in case you haven’t noticed, people drive even more dickishly (copyright, ERG) now than at other times of the year.  Hence, the new title.

Angry Cat Driver

In keeping with the holiday spirit, it is my considered opinion that people are now driving worse than ever.  Both of the regular followers of this blog know that I have a bit of a petulant streak when it comes to my fellow drivers, e.g.., “Overcourteous Assholes Like Me.”  Last year, I was irritated.  This year, I fear for my life.  This year, a new classless class of drivers has appeared, a class that adheres to the following three point credo:

I.  The rules of driving apply to you, not to me. 

II.  Get out of my way.  

III.  My car/truck is a two ton steel weapon on wheels which I am willing to use to injure, maim, or kill if you slow me down or generally do anything that pisses me off.

I refer to this new class of driver as “sodding slugfucks.”  But not to their face.  This is why I don’t refer to these people as “sodding slugfucks” to their face:  Detroit Driver Shot in Face in Road Rage Incident.  If you have ever been tempted to get out of your car to discuss driving etiquette with someone, this article will surely disabuse you of that silly notion.  Please don’t.

It has come to my attention that otherwise reasonable people can and do behave like sodding slugfucks when they drive.  I know this, because I live on an island.  When you live on an island, you occasionally find yourself in a situation of being assaulted by a sodding slugfuck while driving, only to subsequently realize that both of you are driving to the same destination.  On one occasion, that destination turned out to be our mutual place of employment.  We parked next to each other.  Somewhat awkward. On another occasion, the sodding slugfuck cut me off, tried to hit me, then screamed at me through my window before we both ended up in my neighborhood, only to realize that we live on the same block.  Even awkwarder.

With the foregoing in mind, perhaps it would be a holiday mitzvah to point out the type of activity that may lead to the realization that even you may be acting like a sodding slugfuck.  So you can stop.  As kind of a public service, I offer the following:

–Over the last six months, I have witnessed several guys who, in the middle of the day and at a busy intersection, decided that waiting for a traffic light to turn green was for losers, so they proceeded to just sprint across the intersection against the light. This causes every other driver to screech to a halt, wondering what the hell just happened and whether civilization as we know it has come to an end and nobody told us.  If you were one of these guys, and you didn’t jump the light because your wife was in active labor at a nearby hospital, then you, sir, are a sodding slugfuck.  Don’t do that anymore.

–I still pull over when I see an ambulance, lights flashing, come racing up behind me.  Call me old-fashioned, I know.  Other drivers may just drive faster to try to stay ahead of the ambulance, but last I checked that was kind of against the law.  What I’ve noticed now with frightening regularity, however, is that once the ambulance has passed, some sodding slugfuck (sometimes a whole string of sodding slugfucks) is chasing so closely behind the ambulance that I’m nearly killed when I try to pull back into my lane.  Unless you are related to the poor sap in the back of the ambulance, if you don’t let me back into my lane because you’re speeding behind the ambulance, you are a sodding slugfuck.  Or an ambulance-chasing lawyer, in which case you are also a sodding slugfuck.

–It appears that many drivers incur physical pain if they are required to use the brake while driving.  This must be some type of new epidemic, because I witness this ailment at least a half dozen times a day.  The symptoms are evident when a car slows to make a right hand turn and the car behind, instead of braking slightly to let the guy turn, swerves around him into the left turn lane.  Or in my recent experience, across the double yellow line to nearly hit me head-on, requiring me to veer off the road and almost hit a tree.  Main Street in my little hamlet is not the Nouvelle Chicane in Monaco, okay?  If you do this, please stop being a sogging slugfuck.   You’re going to kill someone.  Maybe me.

I could go on, but it’s the holidays.  I’ll save the rest for next year–like how your horn doesn’t make all the cars stuck in traffic ahead of you magically disappear.  Really.

Happy Holidays.  Don’t Drive Angry!

 

Trunk Full of Human Tissue

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Simple elements of life can be a challenge for those pursuing training as a surgeon.  Getting home from work, for example.  In the days when the trainee was expected to take call in a busy hospital every two or three nights, the resident often was trying to drive home in a state of profound sleep deprivation.  This led to significant difficulties.  One of my fellow residents seriously injured her knee by crashing her car driving home after call.  She was on crutches for months, making standing at the OR table a bit of pain.  I can’t even count the number of times I was awakened by angry honking from the car behind me because I had fallen asleep at the wheel while waiting for a traffic light to turn green. I quickly learned to take the car out of gear whenever I stopped at a red light.  Once, I woke up to the sound of my car driving through an abandoned field–had no idea where I was or how I got there.  Most exciting was the time I fell asleep while driving down the merge ramp to the expressway, in the driving rain in the middle of the night–woowee, that was a hoot. You really snap awake when you realize that you are looking at headlights instead of taillights in front of you at sixty miles per hour.Boston City Flow

I found that the only reliable way to get home without falling asleep was to drive as fast as physically possible.  This not only generated the adrenaline necessary to keep my eyelids up, it also shortened the critical period of vulnerability.  Stop signs became optional after one in the morning.  Red lights became optional after three.  You get the idea.

Unfortunately, the police forces of the various localities I drove through were not amused by my technique.  Soon after I adopted my Steve McQueen attitude toward commuting, I began to accumulate significant expenses in the form of moving violations.  While many cops are sympathetic to physicians in training, very few are willing to forego writing the ticket when you just blew through a red light at eighty in a thirty mile per hour zone.  It got to be way too expensive.  I think I was making somewhere in the range of $25,000 a year at the time, and traffic tickets (my kind at least) were over a hundred bucks a pop; they were popping at the rate of one or two a month.  You do the math.

As a result, I had to slow down again.  This worked for a bit, but then one spring evening I fell asleep at a red light and rolled back into the car behind me.  No real damage, but unfortunately the car was driven by a state trooper.  Troopers never let you off without a ticket.  It’s because they have to wear that ridiculous hat, I think.

So driving slow wasn’t working, either.  I needed a solution, as I was facing a problem that would continue for another four years.  At the time of my encounter with the state trooper’s bumper, I was on the transplant service.  One morning, as I was trying to stay awake during attending rounds, I saw my salvation.  It was a styrofoam box just outside the OR, waiting to be tossed in the trash; one of the containers used to hold a kidney being transported between hospitals for transplantation.  The box is about the size you’d expect to hold a St. Bernard, because it needs to hold the ice to keep the kidney cold.  It is impressively marked with multiple labels proclaiming in large, authoritative fonts:  RUSH:  HUMAN TISSUE FOR TRANSPLANT.  I excused myself from rounds (fake page gambit, always handy) and took possession of the box, promising the janitor I’d toss it for him.

From that day on, I never drove anywhere without my HUMAN TISSUE box in the trunk.  Back in Steve McQueen mode, I was again getting pulled over with fair regularity.  Now, however, I greeted the officer with the explanation that I had no time for him, I was driving like this because I had to get a kidney to the hospital for transplant.  This usually elicited quite a bit of skepticism, requiring me to pop the trunk.  Which I would do with profound irritation, pointing at the box and saying, “Okay, believe me now?  Because I gotta get this to {insert name of hospital in general direction I was heading at time I was pulled over) so a little girl will live to see another birthday.  Or is making your ticket quota on my ass more important?  Your call, officer.”  I admit, I usually laid it on a little thick.  What can I say, I was tired. Always tired.

This worked without fail.  I never got another ticket for the rest of my residency.  Only problem was the one time I really gave the cop such a hard time (I was really, really tired) he insisted on giving me an escort all the way to the hospital.  I had to thank him and actually carry the box into the ER as he watched.  I couldn’t leave until he pulled away.

Still better than another hundred bucks down the drain.  Besides, that little girl needed that kidney.