Jobs program

The Taconic State Parkway used to be a major road leading from the Massachusetts border to New York City. Years ago, when the New York State Thruway was built, traffic was diverted, and hardly anyone takes the Taconic any more, preferring a modern highway with tolls and heavy traffic. Don't ask me why--can the people who voted for Eliot Spitzer have their reasons?

So I am driving down the Taconic State Parkway, zipping along nicely at 70 miles per hour. There is one vehicle in sight, ahead of me, and no-one coming in the opposite direction as far as the eye can see. Long story short, a state trooper stops me and issues an expensive ticket, and I have to send a certified check for a lot of money to some jerkwater town in Upstate New York.

I am appalled by the witlessness of this entire transaction. I was not drunk, I was not on drugs, I was in total control of the car, I was not endangering myself or others. If I had hit somebody at 55 mph they would be just as dead as if I had been going 70.

So what's the rationale? The State trooper is paid a lot of money to stop people like me, so the State can get enough money to pay the trooper, who then has to stop more people like me so that State will have enough money to pay his salary.

Okay, I figured it out. It's a jobs program! All these people--the trooper, the clerk who sends out the notice, the judge who presides over the court, the bank which issues the certified check, and the mailman who delivers it, and goodness knows who else--are productively employed.

I'm proud I could do my part! Otherwise, unemployment might be at, oh, 50 percent, maybe, instead of 9.6.

Why are the people of Bel Air, MD trying to kill me?

First some geezer pulls on to the right shoulder as I'm crossing the intersection--my light, needless to say, but I'm saying it--and proceeds to drift into my lane just as I got to the other side. Of course, he ignored the horn. He was only inches away when I swerved into the left lane, which was thankfully unoccupied 'cuz I checked. That's just the kind of person I am. I'm afraid my son made some rather rude gestures, but the geezer was oblivious. After all, if you can't see a midsize sedan, how can you possibly take note of a middle finger being waved inside said sedan?

About 30 seconds later, I turned onto a side street that separates two shopping centers when some crazed soccer mom ran through a stop sign in her single-minded frenzy to get from Target to the La-Z-Boy Furniture Showroom. This time she stopped, with only about a foot to spare.