How is it that when I drive the modest, sweetly blue, compact-sized car about the city of Toronto, I get honked at, shoved out of place in the line, pushed aside, ignored and practically run off the highway? There isn't a day I drive that car when at least five drivers wave angrily, shout, honk or try to run me over. And the same was true when I drove the little red car with its Farmers Feed Cities sticker in the back window.
I used to wonder if it was my grey hair, but then I remembered that I drove the candy-apple car when my hair was still black (or at least looked that way), with all sorts of happy-faced teenagers and a sweet dog staring out upon the world. And still the onslaught came. Who can possibly say why?
My daughter, on the other hand, drives a steely-grey vehicle bigger than three small islands put together. Her SUV -- euphemistically referred to as 'the truck' -- stands taller than our last apartment building, and you can comfortably house seven large families inside. On the back window, instead of a relatively benign farmer reminder, an angry red-and-black Sens Army sticker blazes its name and way across the back window. Army? I ask myself. And then I sigh.
So why is it that, whenever I hoist myself up into the driver's seat of my daughter's gas guzz-- no...I must mean truck -- everyone and his brother moves out of the way for me?
Yesterday, so many people stopped to let me in, I thought that it must be Good Samaritan Day. I heard not one honk, saw no fingers, and in fact, couldn't count as high as the number of lane-changing signals I blinked at (causing me to wonder if my retinas were over-active).
In fact, when I made that illegal right-hand turn from Bloor Street (Mary said, when I dropped her off two minutes before, "Take the first right") and the policeman pulled me over, instead of the typical $110.00 fine + two demerit points, he handed me a ticket for $18.75 and smiled.
I don't get it. There seems to be no logic to it, no sense in the equation. But in the end I do know this: if I ever decide to drive to Florida, I know which vehicle I am taking.
Go, Sens, go!!
Cars are cars, all over the world...
Paul Simon
