DRIVING ME CRAZY

Ok, sorry for my soapbox, but I've about had it...Crazy may not be the right word, but I seriously just don't get some people. The topic up for discussion here is driving in this crazy place called Houston/Galveston and surrounding areas. Let's start with a few announcements to the drivers around here: 1) Please leave your ego at home. I do not care about you or your ego, and I will not be catering to either of you. We all get to play by the same rules, so don't get all grumpy when you don't play fair and you don't like the outcome. Contrary to your twisted view of things, you are not king of the road! 2) Please wake up before you hit the road. Being completely oblivious while you are operating that machine capable of killing someone is entirely unacceptable. Wake up, stay in your own lane, and pay attention. 3) Please hang up the phone. Actually, just don't get on it in the first place. I'm not saying that it's impossible to talk on the phone and drive a car well at the same time-I've done it too, but I've found that around here, most people seem incapable of such feats. If this principle is ignored, I've found that principles #1 and #2 often get ignored as well, which makes for some seriously superb drivers...insert sarcasm. 4) Just because your vehicle is bigger, doesn't mean that left lane with the shoulder is meant for you. That lane would be meant for passing. If you want to pass people in the other lanes, please use that left lane to do so. If you do not wish to pass people, please get your "too big for you to be driving" vehicle out of the passing lane. I haven't encountered this in the other cities I've lived in, but around here, vans, school buses, and big work trucks/vans just seem to flock over to that side. There are 3, sometimes 4 lanes going either direction-it's really not necessary to camp out over there! You probably think I'm just being ugly, but the drivers I've encountered here in my 9 months here have really been a different breed. I saw a lady today that really just epitomized what I see on a daily basis: this lady lives in my apartment complex, so I recognize her car. To begin with, she can't park her SUV. I see her more often than not in two parking spaces rather than one. I have actually seen her parked in the middle of the street a few times. Not in a spot-actually parked in the fire lane blocking traffic through our complex. No hazard lights...and no, she didn't move it quickly. I've seen it left in places like that for hours on end. She has a handicap license plate, and I have yet to see her in that nice, wide handicap parking spot. So there's issue one. I've seen her drive, and let's just say that I go the opposite direction she's going because it's always ugly. But today was a new low for even her. I watched her pull up to our apartment gate, then as it was opening, she drove right through the gate-breaking it and doing some nice damage to her car. Really? Just run plum through the gate with your car? I have to say that I've never seen someone do that before today...and I couldn't believe my eyes. She didn't hit it accidentally or something-she went straight through the thing and continued out to the main road like nothing ever happened. And she was not in any hurry-you can ask the cars she cut off to get onto the road to go far less than the posted speed limit. I can tell you honestly that I see stuff like this probably on a weekly basis. Whether it's this nutcase, or the prick that STOPPED to ogle a car accident scene while they put a lady on a stretcher and into an ambulance. If that was your daughter in a terrible car accident clinging to life, would you want some random stranger stopping traffic so he could stare at her? CREEP. Yup, I get the joy of witnessing the abundance of stupidity around here...and seeing stuff like this so routinely, I'm seriously terrified of my ER rotation. The people I see get to walk away from their episodes of stupidity; I don't even want to think about the people that are going to be brought in to me by the ambulances and how they got into that situation. I'm going to have to do some anger management courses before then or something. And you may be thinking, "if you hate it so much, why don't you just move somewhere else?" Well, you see, I'm in this thing called a Master's program and I can't just up and transfer to a different school. It's kind of a big deal. Even if I could do that, I love my school, my classmates, and my professors. I can honestly say I am getting the absolute best education for me here at UTMB. But after I finish-and I do literally mean AS SOON as I possibly can, don't worry, I'll be in my moving truck headed back north with Ryan, the pups, and Tig! Until then, can we please try to keep the stupidity, the egos, and the oblivious-ness to a minimum? I would really like to make it back home to my family. Thanks, I greatly appreciate it...