If you were unaware, the midwestern United States has seen moderately below-average ambient heat energy levels, these past few days.
After a full day of half-watching folks sliding (mostly intentionally! <3) through the t-junction just in front of my girlfriend’s living room’s window, traffic had dropped to just about nill last night. I was blabbing at length to my poor dear about something, facing the opposite way when her attention was (shockingly) stolen by a dwelling automobile at like 10PM.
I looked and saw that said automobile was a Dart, immediately, and that its driver was struggling in a particular sort of way – completely stopped, fully within their lane on a minimally dry powdered (snow) road, rapidly struggling between completely ineffective means of freeing a car from a stuck situation. It’s been a long time since I’ve so quickly come to the conclusion that I might actually be able to assist a passing stranger with this sort of problem, but it was swift.
So, I put on my faux hiking boots directly over my alarmingly decaying feet, Micky Mouse pajamas, and waddle out to this goddamned Dart. As I approached, I saw that the rear wheel facing me was completely locked while they were spinning the front (driving) wheels. I walked up to the driver’s window as it rolled down, and the person immediately asked if I"d give them a push. It took me like 5 minutes to respond with “I will, but before I do, would you let me get in your seat and try for a sec,” but they also let me get in “is your handbrake on?”
I sincerely love what happened next and wish more people did it – they turned away just long enough to put a handbrake down, immediately started moving, and then turned back to me to acknowledge it without the slightest indication of like… self-flagellation, ya know? Not even a hint of a oh silly me or even a it’s been a long day just… The problem is solved.
(Hilariously, their final words were I love your positive energy or something.)
I’m taking the time to pound this out because 1.) the first episode of Honk was on the first market year of the very same (very disappointing in a very specific way) car and I suspect the bizarre conundrum of unknowingly engaging one’s handbrake has more to do with that than the driver’s ignorance and 2.) as someone who only knows a lot about cars, I genuinely believe it’s important to point out these absurdly-avoidable gaps in knowledge as not a failure of an individual or whatever, but the result of the systemic, completely inexplicable neglect of driver education in this country. (The one that can be wholly described as of the automobile, without a doubt, yes?)
I have to rant in writing at least once, I guess, about how unacceptable the outcome of the past decade or so of automotive mysticism as catalyzed by contemporary capitalism’s influence. Proceeding collectively toward a solution for the “growing issue” of road deaths in this country by catastrophically abstracting more and more control away from individual drivers at the dire expense of FUCKING WEIGHT and calling it ecological has been deeply…. DEEPLY upsetting, to say the least.
Fucking STOP. And get your musker ass out of my town before this becomes the property-destruction-at-scale sort of fury.
And remember!
Everything I do, it’s for the P-Word.
