Turn To The Left
All of us have our pet peeves when it comes to driving. Some motorists are infuriated by tailgating, others cannot stand a slow car in the passing lane, and some object to the high speed at which their fellow drivers pass them. I share these annoyances and many others, but for whatever reason, the traffic behaviors that irritate me the most seem to be related to left turns. One of the practices that I dislike is absolutely against the law, another is of questionable legality, and a third is perfectly legal but nonetheless maddening to me.
I commence my diatribe with the most grievous offense, a traffic violation so blatant that the first time I encountered it I was left slack-jawed in astonishment. Picture an average intersection with traffic stopped along its north/south axis. The drivers wait patiently for the light to change. As you mentally survey the scene, keep your eyes on the southbound car in the left turn lane, which is poised to enter the intersection, wait for oncoming traffic to clear, and turn to the east. This is the car that will soon do something aggressive, reckless and dangerous. Let's refer to its driver as Joe Dingus, for the sake of clarity.
And The Shark Goes “Grrr!”
Oh, the many pleasant hours I spent plucking junk from its spring-loaded jaw!
We are in full summer mode here in the Hunt household, and perhaps there is no greater indication of our seasonal relaxation than the fact that we have just sacrificed four consecutive evenings to view the entire Jaws tetralogy. This is what can happen when you have time on your hands and the ability to stream Netflix offerings on your TV. It all started innocently enough on Sunday evening, the first of several nights that our eldest daughter was away at camp, thus reducing the number of family members needed for unanimous entertainment option agreement to three. Somehow the availability of Jaws for streaming came up, and it struck each of us as a fun viewing choice for different reasons. My wife remembered seeing it many years ago. Our youngest daughter had heard about it and was intrigued. And me? I came within a shark's tooth of seeing Jaws at a drive-in in the summer of '77.
It is easy now to forget just how big a pop culture phenomenon Jaws became after its 1975 release. The movie allegedly deterred impressionable viewers from enjoying the beach. It was memorably lampooned in the famous "Landshark" sketches of Saturday Night Live, an effects-laden sendup called "Jowls" on The Carol Burnett Show, and a classic Mort Drucker/Larry Siegel movie parody in MAD magazine. Among the merchandising tie-ins was an Ideal Jaws game that featured a G-rated version of the Freudian movie poster on its box (minus the naked woman swimming above the advancing shark). I owned the game, which consisted of a hollow plastic shark with a hinged jaw, upon which an assorted of marine detritus was balanced. Players used a small hook to retrieve the items, until at last the weight of the remaining pieces no longer counterbalanced the tensile strength of attached rubber bands, whereupon the jaws suddenly snapped shut. I thought the game was great.
A couple summers later I was asked by a friend to accompany her family and some other kids to a drive-in showing of Jaws. I was incensed when my mother firmly declined the invitation on the grounds that the movie was too disturbing for anyone my age.
Hot Hot Hot
Hot times on Beale Street, Memphis, 2006. Note the pedestrians in long pants.
It's hot right now in the Midwest, though nowhere near as steamy as the triple-digit extremes that the unfortunate citizens of our Eastern Seaboard are experiencing. Nevertheless, once the temperature tops 90° Fahrenheit and surpasses that benchmark on a daily basis, those of us with the luxury of air-conditioned homes and cars take a little longer to acclimate. We even start to ponder how the world ever got along without air conditioning, ignoring the fact that much of it still does. Once you're used to living in perpetually comfortable environs, it's easy to get so accustomed to it that the seasonal highs of the summer months seem almost like an affront from nature.
"When Mom and I were your age," I recently pontificated to our eldest daughter, "we grew up without air conditioning in our homes."
"What did you do?" she asked, never having known such discomfort.
Independence Day
AT MY DESK, JULY 4, 2010
The disgruntled Declaration of an American Newspaper Subscriber
When in the Course of a newspaper subscription it becomes necessary for one reader to dissolve the commercial band that has connected him to the daily local and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal stations to which the Law of Supply and Demand and the Free Market entitles him, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that he should declare the causes which impel him to the separation.
I hold these truths to be self-evident, that all newspaper readers are created equal, that they are endowed by their literacy with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are the expectation of a decent Life section, Liberty from shameless and unwarranted self-promotion, and the pursuit of Happiness under a fair and reasonable home subscription rate. --- That to secure these rights, Journalistic and Publishing Standards are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Free Market, --- That whenever any Newspaper becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Reader to alter or to abolish it, and to utilize Alternative Media Sources, choosing reputable outlets according to such principles and organizing his browser bookmarks in such form, as to him shall seem most likely to effect his Informed Opinion and Consumer Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Newspaper Subscriptions long established should not be canceled for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that a loyal readership is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right itself by abolishing the daily delivery to which it is accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under an absolute Monopoly, it is his right, it is his duty, to throw off such Newspaper, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --- Such has been the patient sufferance of this Reader; and such is now the necessity which constrains him to alter his former Means of Gathering News. The history of The Columbus Dispatch is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Commercial Tyranny over this Reader. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Acceleration
Today is my 42nd birthday, and I am beginning to think that I might be experiencing one of the most enjoyable seasons of my life. It's hard to tell for sure, as such grand evaluations are truly valid only in retrospect. In fact, without knowing the near and distant future, it's impossible to say whether I will one day remember these years as some of the best. But I have an inkling that I am living the golden days right now, despite various challenges that might lead me to conclude otherwise. I have arrived at this belief after observing the way in which I currently experience the passage of time.
It's one of the peculiarities of life that time seems to accelerate as we age. Intellectually, I can grasp this, because there is a logical reason behind it. We measure the passage of time with unchanging, defined intervals: hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades. As we grow older, any one of those intervals represents an ever-decreasing percentage of our longevity. On my fifth birthday, for example, one year was equivalent to 20% of the entire time I had been alive. But today, at 42, one year is merely 2% of my existence. Consequently, I perceive the passage of one year as occurring much more rapidly now than I did when I was five.