Prototype Issue
Surviving LA Gridlock: It’s Time To Reinvent The Wheel
By Kelly "I have An Inner Super Hero" Potts
(page 1 of 1)Why bother trying to stay sane in LA traffic? Operation Traffiq Freedom will save you by making sanity irrelevant.
I was on one of those suicidal kamikaze missions from Burbank to Brentwood—via Sunset Blvd.—at rush hour.
Within the first six insufferable minutes of my slog, I wondered if this might not be the perfect moment to finally swallow the arsenic stowed in the “poison ring” on my right index finger (the only item in my Earthquake Preparedness Kit and my ticket out in case I happen to be sitting under an overpass when the Big One hits).
Instead, I decided to launch a preemptive strike against the Axles of Evil. Operation Traffiq Freedom™ is my oft-exercised battle plan that has never in all the years I’ve used it brought me any type of freedom from tyrannical traffic conditions. However, due to my deep inner convictions it will work one day despite all empirical evidence of my gross incompetence to the contrary, I use it again and again, making me eligible one day to apply as a paid Overcome Reality life coach to the leaders of the free world, who, on second thought, don’t need my help.
OTF employs a simple four-pronged strategy:
1. Demolition commences with a fit of maniacal station-changing coordinated with an all-out campaign of shock-and-awe self-recrimination that quickly lays waste to my inner Super Hero. This offensive begins with calling into question every decision I have ever made in my life, starting with practical litanies like, “What kind of twisted, pathetic, masochistic imbecile would attempt to go to Brentwood from the Valley via Sunset Blvd.?” After which I work backward to the obvious fact that “I should never have been born.”
2. Reconstruction: Even though all remnants of my self-respect have been utterly shattered and despite the fact that I am now occupied by the enemy (traffic), I seek to salvage what is left of my day. I start by conducting a thorough inventory of the car. I then use leftover napkins from the glove box to tidy the crevices of the dashboard.
I arrange all condiments (ketchup, salt, soy sauce) and plastic fork sets into neat little rows in the console before alphabetizing the insurance papers and stacking all parking tickets in ascending order of dollar amount (placing arrest warrants for outstanding tickets on top). Once I have finished my last infrastructure tasks—reading the car stereo manual from cover to cover and programming the buttons—I end with a small reward by getting out my battery-powered Easy-Bake Oven and making myself a small vanilla cake.
3. Insurgency: After a nice dessert, I relaunch a lethal 45-minute insurgency against my incompetent planning by yanking out all the fuses in the hidden panel below the dashboard, just to see what happens, following this by compulsively reprogramming all the stereo buttons (this time, to heavy metal stations). As Metallica roars in the background, I detonate “could have” bombs (every other useful thing I could have done in the time I’ve been sitting here). I could have taken the Concord to Liechtenstein and toured the entire country by now. I could have glued Legos on every square inch of my car’s exterior and built little wings on the door panels.
By the time my mind has become completely unhinged, I seal the deal with a stab at Guantanamo-style torture techniques by listening to the Rush Limbaugh at deafening decibels while staring straight into the sun without my sunglasses. Just as the nausea sets in from the high decibels (not, of course, from the content of these programs) and about the moment I begin to feel a slight breeze wafting through the car’s shattered windows. I know I am sailing into:
4. The Seeds of Democracy: The Illusion of Freedom, in which a final fit of maniacal station-changing uncovers the looping polka rhythms of Mexican mariachis—the perfect soundtrack for breaking through the thin partition still wedged between my stultifying reality and sumptuous memory. Here I can meander unobstructed down memory lane—reliving in a Zen-like state the gelatinous roll of the front seat of my long-gone wreck of a ’69 Dodge Dart with its symphony of loose parts—its rearview mirror swinging to and fro, while intermittent faces of people in the back seat float by like dream sequences in a Fellini film.
I am certain this OFT revelation will provide you either endless relief or absolutely no help whatsoever for your traffic woes.
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