For use: Friday, October 13, 2000 and thereafter

mfinley: "One Man's Meter"

by Michael Finley

Computer User Columnist

I don’t work for a living, being a writer. So I am not often out and about during rush hour, when the freeway meters grimly blink one car after another onto the highway.

But on those occasions when I am about, I take the slowdown very personally.

Like, right now. I'm waiting in a line of about 60 cars on the ramp where 280 meets westbound I94 in Saint Paul. Traffic below zips by unimpeded. Yet here we all are, nudging one another's bumpers, waiting for the green light to smile on us.

Oops, there goes a car down the carpool lane, with just a driver. That's ... cheating....  it's ... criminal ... I wish I'd thought of it.

I wonder if I can use that lane when I'm out with my poodle. He's tall. I could put a bonnet on him.

The Subaru guy beside me, on the cellphone, he thinks he's getting through first. Every ten seconds we pass, and eye one another competitively.

What bugs me is that the traffic engineers are picking favorites. If you drive in from the far suburbs, you don’t face a meter at all. And there you go, tootling by while I shimmer in my misery.

Come to think of it, this whole freeway thing seems to be for your benefit.

How I hate you.

It's like a premiere where the flashy celebs are ushered in, and the peons must wait behind the velvet rope, dying for a flash of green.

I hear the ticking of the car clock. Each second is a second taken from my life. I could be down there, going somewhere. Doing something constructive with the time God has allotted me. Instead I'm in this stupid car waiting for this stupid, stupid light. 

It isn’t fair. My pursuit of happiness is down there, on the freeway. How I yearn for release, to plunge the pedal downward, and feel the rush of fossil fuel igniting underfoot.

There's nothing you can do. Honk and you just make your fellow detainees mad. Take out pen and paper to jot a note to the highway department, and the guy behind you lays it on, loud and hard.

I am going to replace my car horn with a device that says MOO.