Monday, January 15, 2007

On the streets of Burque

The other night, my husband, Mark, and I decided to go to dinner. During this one trip, we encountered numerous bad drivers. If you're a fellow New Mexican, you're probably shrugging right now and thinking, "yeah, so what?" New Mexico is notorious for having bad drivers.

In the movies, drivers in NYC are always portrayed as mean and inconsiderate. Well, New Mexicans are much worse. Only we don't honk our horns as much. We prefer to just shoot at the other driver.

You know how it's bad to turn right from the middle- or left-hand lanes? Well, in this one outing, we had this happen not once, not twice, not three times, but FOUR TIMES. It was really two separate incidents, one of which was very eerie and involved numerous vehicles: one turned from the left lane, one from the center, one went around from behind us as the car in front of us stayed still and let everyone do this. It seemed to be planned out in some bizarre way. Since we were on Central Avenue. I pleaded with my husband to let it go and stay back. I was sure the bullets were about to start flying between these cars. We pulled into a parking lot, successfully finding the only icy place left in the city and thus fishtailing a bit, waited for a moment and then went on our way.

A few weeks ago, on New Year's morning, a road rage incident left two middle-aged women here shot to death. Sometimes it's better to swallow your pride and let the asshole continue on his way.

New Mexico is known for other things too, such as high teen pregnancy, violence against pregnant women and best of all, likelihood to not succeed.

But somehow I love this state and wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Maybe I'm just a sucker for the blue skies, white clouds and endless sun.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You act like there's something wrong with road rage (as you call it). I think a person has the right to defend their right of way, and to take someone else's if they don't know how to use it.

Robyn said...

I smell "Dad" written all over this one. Yep. I remember that fine comeback I had when I was 3 and you called me a "panty-waist" and I quickly called you a "T-shirt face."

Anonymous said...

and you're STILL a panty-waist, apparently, when it comes to keeping other drivers in their place.