“I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard sign that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is ‘Disappear Here’ and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero
From my old journal, The Daily Epiphany, August 9, 1999:
Slip Slidin’ Away
Sometimes, when you least expect it, you discover a moment of… if not beauty or wonder, at least amusement.
Today I drove home fighting through the hot afternoon rush hour traffic. I stopped as a light snapped yellow then red. It was a new light, on a T-Shaped intersection right north of where the road arches up and over Interstate 30.
I bent forward and fooled with the radio buttons, settling on some Brahms, something relaxing to help me live through the drive. So I missed it. Some guy had come into the T at such a rate of speed, making his left turn, that he spun his car completely around, and was now sitting completely sideways across all three lanes of traffic.
He had a nondescript small black car, an amateur spraycan paint job, no gloss, small dents all along the fenders. Drunk dents we used to call these. His entire back seat was covered by a sheet of unfinished plywood pierced by giant speakers. I had a good look at him, his window was down, his A/C must have been busted. The guy looked to be in his late twenties, baseball cap on backwards, dirty unkempt long mullet hair, big cheap earring. His expression was somehow simultaneously sheepish, stupid, and cocky.
My light turned green but we had to wait while the idiot managed to maneuver his car back and forth until he was pointing in more or less the right direction.
The amusing part was that, in addition to nobody getting hurt, right when he had is straightened out, a cop shot around me on the shoulder, lights flashing, and nailed him. I grin a little thinking of the reckless driving citation Mr. Speed Racer now has to deal with.
Bill Chance 