Cynical Meat Sack

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Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Death by Cell Phone

Rising fuel costs saved my life today.

Kinda different tone than the title of this post...but, it will all fit in a minute.

My name is Kyuball, and I listen to talk radio. NPR, Neal Boortz, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Laura Ingram, Free Talk Live...to name a few of the shows that I end up listening to. (Any friends of mine that know my real name, just passed out.) I can't help it, I love to hear conservatives and liberals rant. It's a sickness, really. Let me clarify: I don't actively seek out these hosts...well, maybe Savage...they're just on when I want to listen to radio.

Anyway...for the last few weeks, rising fuel costs have been on the lips of most of these talk show hosts. What can we do, who's to blame, Iran must be paved over, Bush is insane...blah, blah, blah. Well, one of the "tips" that continues to be mentioned is to slow down and try not to drive too aggressively and you can save your gas mileage.

So, today, I left work early because my son is sick and took a back road from work to get to the highway. This back road has lots of hills where you can't see over one to the next to see what's coming...so, it's a "no passing zone". Seems reasonable. I use this piece of road often because I can avoid traffic in getting to the interstate.

When I turn on to this road, generally I open it up a bit...not too bad, but I generally hit it at 60 mph...it's a 35mph zone. Today, I decided that I'd cruise it a bit and scaled it down to about 45 - 50mph.

interlude

You know the saying that just before you die, your life flashes before your eyes? I think it's more like a heightened state of awareness. Your brain goes into hyper-mode. I believe that your brain has the ability, in fight or flight situations, to become a mega-super computer that can process millions of calculations in a split second. This doesn't mean your body can react to the signals fast enough...just that the brain tries to. This is probably why people also say that, "It all happened in slow motion."

end interlude

As I came to the second hill, a sliver Buick Le Suckbre, crested the hill from the opposite direction. In my lane...not the two drivers-side tires...no, full on, all fours and more in my lane headed right for me and my little Japanese truck.

In the span of saying, "Holy fucking shit! You fuck, you fuck, you fucking fuck." I experienced a moment of total awareness:

The sun, was partially clouded...and shone through the sun-roof, pleasantly heating my scalp. The radio station was on NPR and the music was a slightly melancholy piano solo. The Le Suckbre was freshly washed and sparkled in the sunlight as it crested the hill. It was driving at a 7%-10% angle to the lane it should have been in which would put it in the grass on my right in less than 40 yards. I'm driving at 47 miles an hour and will be seriously injured if we collide head on. My health insurance card is in the third sleeve of my wallet. The co-pay for emergency room visits are $75. The driver of the Le Suckbre has a cell phone in his hand that he is holding up in the middle of his steering wheel in what appears to be a vain attempt to drive and use his peripheral vision while he A) Finds a phone number in his contacts list. B) Sends a text message. C) Plays Tetris. or D) Drives his car like James bond through his phone, but his controller is inverted. I don't have anti-lock breaks. There is no real shoulder on this part of the road. There is a retention pond on my right, that runs the length of this stretch of road, with a Male Mallard Duck swimming in the middle, he looks at my truck. I apply my breaks at 80% to 90% of full force and turn the wheel sharply. My breaks lock slightly, but do not squeal, the sound is like dragging cardboard over dry dirt. The patch of grass is not too bumpy, I won't flip over, but I may land in the pond after we collide. Water will leak into the cab through the crack in my windshield that's been there for months. I'm still waiting on the insurance company to call me back to inspect my "hail" damage. I'm 15 feet from the other driver. He looks up. I'm far enough over to the right now that he will miss, I turn left slightly so as not to shift my center of gravity too much and flip into the pond. The duck begins to take flight. The LeSuckbre passes me on the left, the driver has dropped his phone, and his mouth is shaped as if he's saying, "Oh..." I think he's going to finish with "...oh I'm a complete fucking moron, please don't beat me with a gas pump handle." I pull back on to the road and see in my driver side mirror the LeSuckbre begin to pull back into his lane, just in time to miss the red Geo Metro(sexual) that was following me. In my passenger side mirror I notice that my tires did not kick up any dust. Probably because of the rain we've had recently.

All of that in the span of less than 3 or 4 seconds.

Had I been doing my usual 60 mph, I wouldn't be typing this right now. I'd be in the hospital having the steering column of a '91 Toyota removed from my colon...maybe worse.

I'm not going to get all sappy on you, suggesting that we all go out and hug our families or live life like every day is your last. Hallmark moments, one and all.

However, I am not going to drive and dial. I would ask that you do the same. If you see someone texting while driving...honk, and flip them off. If they don't look up, pull over and wait 10 minutes...someone's going to be in an accident soon, you don't want it to be you...find a different route to where ever you were going, traffic is going to be backed up soon.

If you happen to see a red Toyota 4x4 parked on the side of the road next to a man beating the fuck out of some one with a cellphone stuffed in a tube sock...honk and wave, I'm visiting your town.

(I just taught spell check the word "LeSuckbre." Aren't computers fun?)

20 Comments:

At 7:54 PM, Blogger Sarah Letnes said...

I would flip driving phone users off, but I'm afraid of being beaten with the handle of a gas pump for doing so. It's like they think Freedom of Speech entitles them to use their phones while they're in traffic.

 
At 1:09 AM, Blogger The Phosgene Kid said...

What call could be important enough to have to take while driving - who could they possibly be talking to that is so improtant they couldn't wait until they got home or to the office. I know I am fed up with these asswipes with the phone welded to the side of their noggin. The Cell phone has turned us into a world of assholes.

 
At 10:38 AM, Blogger Becky said...

I had someone try to kill me the other day on a mountain road, and besides almost dying, the part that really enraged me is I couldn't even tell the person off, they just drove on and didn't stop while i'm sitting in the road where I had to slam on my brakes...

 
At 12:07 PM, Blogger crallspace said...

Kyuball.. I will respond to the post soon, but google XXX under an image search. Look what photo comes up in the first page. Look familiar?

Maybe it'll be the 2nd page..

 
At 4:19 PM, Blogger Mathieu said...

Woah, long post!

cell phones ... No good will ever come out of those.

 
At 6:42 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

moments of random idiocy - yikes! good think you're okay!

 
At 2:51 PM, Blogger The Phosgene Kid said...

As they say in Arizona - Where you at???

 
At 9:03 PM, Blogger KyuBall said...

I tried to post a rant a couple of days ago, I was about an hour into it, finishing some spelling corrections and my browser crashed. I was so pissed, I nearly broke my laptop.

 
At 2:20 PM, Blogger crallspace said...

Kyuball... I just got the chance to read this whole post over. Apologies for my absence. Been nice weather lately.

Anyway, I can totally imagine having all those thoughts at once..or really close together. Good thing that all turned out well... and glad you're here & able to tell the story.

I have been trying to cut back on cell usage in the car... but I really haven't driven much lately... today is the first day in a month I am filling up. the "good" news is that gas is down one penny! Whoopty shit... thanks, you vipers!

As far as talk radio goes anymore... yes, NPR is great. Community radio (kinda rare these days) is good too. I used to like Sean back in the day... can't stand him anymore. Nor Rush. I won't let that guy get to me anymore.

 
At 3:35 PM, Blogger Timmy said...

I literally give every single cellphone-yapping driver that I see the finger.
Every.fucking.one.
I've said for years now that the fault for any wreck involving someone on a cellphone should automatically go to the cellphone-talkee. That'd mean that if you wanted a new car, but didn't want to have to pay for it, you could just drive around until you saw someone talking on a cellphone and plow into them. Cha-ching!

 
At 4:39 PM, Blogger Gina said...

I haven't been by for a while, but I'm at a quiet job today and thought I'd catch up. Very eye opening. I'm glad you're ok.

I'm pissed no one is keeping up with The Story. I think you and I should just keep writing it. I started a blog for fiction exercises if you are interested. :)

And I adore NPR and liberal rants. I hope you see this.

 
At 12:14 PM, Blogger Ben, aka BadBen said...

I've had similar "near hits" with idiot cellphone users. By the way, for those drivers who think "hands free" cellphone devices are safe to use while driving...think again! If you are heavily involved in a conversation, you are not concentrating on what you should be doing: DRIVING.

Blue Tooth may have worked for Uhuru on Old Skool Star Trek episodes, but she wasn't driving the fucking Enterprise, folks!

Cellphone idiocy is a symptom of the times. We Americans seem to think we have to fill every moment with multi-tasking and be in constant communication with someone (or something), but we have trouble "living in the moment" and paying attention to ourselves and our relationship to our surroundings.

 
At 8:25 AM, Blogger kathi said...

Wondering how and where you are. Miss reading you.

 
At 6:10 PM, Blogger crallspace said...

Kyubal... where are you?

 
At 8:43 PM, Blogger Chickie said...

*poke* *poke*

 
At 11:31 PM, Blogger Becky said...

Whatever happened to the Kyuball?!

 
At 10:25 PM, Blogger David Stehle said...

Hey Becky, I was just going to ask the same thing.

 
At 11:27 PM, Blogger KyuBall said...

Sorry folks...I missed...damn, ALL of May. I've haven't given up on blogging, just been busy. Thanks for checking up on me!

 
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