You know who you are. You pull past the spot, stop traffic, and then spend forty-five seconds reversing into a space that you could have pulled into face-first in three.
You do this because you believe it will save you time when you leave. It will not. You saved four seconds on departure and cost everyone else a minute on arrival. That is not efficiency. That is selfishness wearing a seatbelt.
The speed limit on North 19th Avenue is 35 miles per hour. I know this because I read the sign. It is a white sign with black numbers. It is not ambiguous. It does not say “35 or whatever feels right.” It says 35.
I drive 35.
Every single day, someone in a truck that costs more than my house rides my bumper like we’re in a draft at Talladega. They flash their lights. They swerve. They make a face I can see clearly in my rearview mirror because they are that close. Then they pass me, accelerate to what I estimate is 50, and arrive at the next red light four seconds before I do.
The WinCo parking lot has become a lawless frontier. Not because of crime — because of shopping carts. Abandoned shopping carts rolling freely across the asphalt like tumbleweeds in a western nobody asked for.
There is a corral. It is painted yellow. It asks nothing of you except an additional fifteen to forty feet of walking after loading your groceries.
Last Tuesday I watched a grown man in a Carhartt jacket park his cart directly behind someone else’s Subaru and walk away. He did not look back. He did not hesitate. He simply decided the cart’s journey was over and the next chapter was someone else’s problem.
My wife asked me to try oat milk. I said fine. I’m a reasonable man.
It is not milk. I don’t mean that politically. I mean I poured it into my coffee and the coffee turned a color I’ve never seen before. A defeated color. I drank it because I said I would, then I drove to Town & Country and bought a half gallon of 2% like a person who hasn’t lost his mind.
There is no such thing as a quick trip to Costco. It has never existed. Every person who has ever said “I’m just running to Costco real quick” has returned ninety minutes later with a rotisserie chicken, a forty-eight pack of paper towels, a patio umbrella they didn’t know they needed, and a facial expression that suggests they’ve been through something.
Last Saturday I went for dog food. One item. I left with $247 worth of goods and a sincere belief that my family needed a six-pound bag of frozen potstickers. The sample lady made a compelling argument.
You go in. You go around. You come out. That’s the whole thing.
And yet every single day I watch someone stop inside the roundabout. Inside it. As if the concept of yielding to the left has broken their understanding of the physical world. They just stop, in the circle, and look at everyone else like we’re the problem.
Then there’s the blinker situation. If you exit a roundabout without signaling, you are choosing chaos. You are telling every other driver that your plans are a mystery. That’s not driving. That’s interpretive dance.
Editor’s note: The following was submitted unsolicited to our offices in a hand-addressed envelope. We are printing it in full.
I have been going to the same deli for seven years. Every Thursday. Turkey on wheat, no tomato, extra mustard, and a pickle on the side. The pickle was the reason I went on Thursdays specifically, because Thursday is when they put out the new batch and the crunch was at its peak. I don’t say this to be dramatic. I say it because it is important to understand what the pickle meant before I explain what happened to it.