Close The Freaking Gap

In the land where I grew up traffic did not exist.  Sure, we would hear about it on the news, and sometimes people would come back from big cities with tales of driving below the speed limit on the freeways, but to be honest, it was hard for us to imagine. To us, speed limits were suggestions, lights were far and few between, and there were always six different ways to get somewhere using a old back road.

So, when I moved to L.A., and experienced my first real taste of traffic, you can only imagine what an ordeal it was for me.  First, I went through denial. I went out at three o'clock to run errands, thinking that if I didn't get on the freeway I would have no problem getting across town to Target.  Stupid.  How could I have known that at three o'clock the entire city of L.A. gets out of school, work, wakes up from comas and enters their cars to sit in jammed freeways and side streets?  Answer: I Should Have Known.  Secondly, I entered the stage of rage.  (I've been in this stage since moving from "denial" about two weeks after moving to Santa Monica.)  This stage consists of driving by people at 1:30 in the afternoon asking, "Where are you going? Why are you not working?  Go home!"  It also consists of a lot of slamming the steering wheel, mapping out alternative routes in your mind, and daydreaming of the day when the Apocalypse will destroy half the population and THEN you might be able to actually get somewhere in a timely fashion.

Lastly, it entails hating every idiot in front of me who refuses to close the gap in front of us.  You know what I'm talking about.  You know when you are in massive traffic and the car in front of you insists on driving even slower and allowing a football field to be between them and the car in front of them?  I hate this wasted space.  Freaking close the gap.  Honestly, I don't understand people that allow this to happen?  Are they just enjoying the traffic so much that they dread the time they actually have to reach their exit and get off?  Are they hoping that if they create enough distance they can finally drive the speed limit and not feel like they are in traffic as they move in the dead space they created?  (Can that even happen?)

Please will someone help me understand these people?  I just don't get them. To me, these are the same people, who order an entire meal, and then after taking one bite, announce in a lethargic voice, "I'm finished." Or who go to concerts only to make seven trips to the bathroom and to get beer.  They are wasteful people, and as far as I'm concerned, should not be allowed in traffic.  They call it "bumper to bumper" traffic for a freaking reason.

And now exhaling...

Oh, and while I'm still in the rage stage - come on Spurs...you had last night!  Geez.