Stop signs

Are probably necessary but they sure are a nuisance.

I will cheerfully admit that anyone that blows through one without even slowing down deserves a ticket. To me they serve as a warning that I ought to start paying attention, especially in residential neighborhoods.

As I near one I slow way down and start scanning for kids, cats, dogs, cars and jack-in-the-boxes. Sometimes I don't come to a dead stop, though. If the coast is 100% clear I might creep on through one.

Enter the local Citizens on Patrol that raise holy hell with people that don't come to a complete stop and even some that do unless they pause there for several seconds.

There's one group that stops at them, drunk drivers. They stop because they don't want to be pulled over. A cop following a suspected DUI looks for excuses and that's a legal excuse to check someone out.

I know because up until the mid 80s like a lot of other people, I drove after drinking. An awful lot of us did. Of course, we stopped religiously at stop signs to the point where I heard a cop mention it to another cop.

I had a Joe Citizen come off his porch shouting a while back and instead of giving him the finger as I drove off, I stopped and backed up and stopped right in front of his porch and asked him what he wanted.

He was a lot humbler when I did this. He walked out and started in on telling me to watch for the kids. Ever notice it's always the kids.

"What did you do? Remarry a woman half your age? I bet your kids are in their thirties and can take care of themselves." He obviously was uncomfortable with that.

"No, the other neighborhood kids," he said, somewhat lamely.

"I've been driving through this neighborhood regularly and I have never seen a kid in any of the four houses on the intersection. I have seen you, though and you drive past my house every day on your way to work a lot faster than the speed limit allows!
Clearly he wasn't ready for this.

"You know who stops carefully at stop signs? Drunk drivers so they don't give a cop an excuse to pull them over!" He wasn't expecting this.

"Listen, I slow down to less than a crawl, carefully check, look out for kids, animals and care ant then proceed carefully. I hope that's good enough. My head is always on a swivel in this neighborhood."

"Yeah, but you didn't come to a complete stop," he was still trying.

"So what. Let's face it, you're just being an a$$hole about it. You don't care about the kids, you just like telling other people what to do! While we're at it, slow down in my neighborhood. We got little kids there."

He didn't know what to say so I drove up the the stop sign, stopped, backed up and stopped again and shouted out the window, "Made up for it. I stopped twice!" and with that I dumped the clutch, sped up to about 20 and went home.

Laws like that were made to protect the public and overzealous bull$hit enforcement doesn't do anyone any good.









To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY