A simple trip to the grocery store or the mall has devolved into a rowdy and unruly game of dodge ball, only with cars instead of balls. I think I know what’s caused this transformation, too. Litterbugs.
They’re everywhere, leaving a trail of trash and detritus in their wake. Soft drink cans, fast food wrappers, shoes, clothes, plastic bags, old, rusty refrigerators. Anything and everything. That’s annoying to the non-littering public, people like you and me, but to store owners who’s parking lots get turned into giant trash cans it’s an eye sore and destroys the harmony of their business atmosphere.
So what do they do? They hire a company to sweep their lot with a truck or, more accurately, an 80-hp vacuum cleaner. It looks like an enormous steel-plated bug as it goes about its work. Scurrying across pavement which, for the sake of efficiency and time-savings, has been cleared of all parking stops, creating a barren wasteland of pavement. With no parking stops, no row upon row of concrete obstacles, no grid pattern to follow, mayhem and chaos and stupidity ensue.
You’ve got cars coming at you from every direction. Fast. You’ve got confused shoppers and wild kids and unsteady seniors and shopping carts and strollers and 2-ton cars going 30+ miles an hour. None of them are paying much attention to where they’re going or what’s in their way. It’s scary. And, I would imagine, hugely expensive for insurance companies. The question is, where’s everyone going? What’s the freaking hurry? I have no idea, people baffle me.
Let this be a warning to all you rational, sensible folks; be careful. Now, a little advice to the half-wits who can’t drive: take the damn bus.
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the whirly girl 