Driven to Drink - Part 1 of a Disjointed Series

I arrived at work today after spending over an hour in my vehicle covering the twelve miles that separate me from my daily grind. And I realized that I barely remembered most of the drive except for a slice of the morning show I listen to that had welcomed Paul Mooney as a guest in their studio.

Paul Mooney is a comedian and comedy writer who has written for Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx, Saturday Night Live, The Dave Chapelle Show and others. Of Barak Obama he says, "His mother is white, he looks like Malcolm X, he speaks like Martin Luther King and Oprah loves him. What's not to like?"

But I digress. I see that most of us seem to move in a quasi-robotic trance as we make our way to work. We've all trodden the same path so many times that it's like being on autopilot. Our vehicles know the way so well that we simply sit back and watch the view change outside our windows until the scenery comes to a halt and we are ushered out: "Please wait until the vehicle has come to a complete stop, and thank you for enduring Your Morning Commute."

Then there are the unfortunate souls who are cramped into a phone booth the entire morning. Phone booths are ungainly vehicles. They rarely have functioning turn signals, bob and weave drunkenly through traffic and around corners, and their harried occupants are well into the first teleconference of the day long before they step foot in the office.

These are the same gentle folk who -- at least, judging by their reactions -- would just as soon shoot me if I dare distract them from whatever is keeping the phone riveted to their ear. So when I use my horn -- which is for signalling other drivers, by the way -- to let them know they are about to redecorate the side of my car with their ill-timed lane change, it's usually then that they seem intent on informing me of their IQ which is always "1". Or maybe that's their emotional age, I'm not sure.

For myself, I try to avoid like the plague being on the phone in the car. My job necessitates that I be reachable 24/7, so my cell phone is my constant companion. I have a snazzy bluetooth earpiece that will answer the phone when I press a button and hook it over my ear, but I refuse to "accessorize" with the damn thing as if it's a high-tech earring that never leaves my head (back to that EM radiation thing from a previous post). Regardless of how much I'm in awe of the Borg from ST:TNG, I don't want to look like one or change my name to Locutus.

So by the end of the day when I return home, I'm ready for an adult beverage -- not to self-medicate, but simply to raise a glass in a toast of thanks that I've successfully circumnavigated my route without any hostile engagements with ungainly phone booths.