The Dangerous Highway Story

The Great Plotnik had no business being on the road yesterday in Stiletto City, when every person in town had left early to go nowhere.

The highways were backed up like reverse Miralax. And not just the freeways, but the secondary roads like Shmentura Boulevard and tertiary roads like Shmaurel Canyon and fourthrary roads like Dona YoMama. The National Bird was flying from every window. On this day before the celebration of national unity and Pilgrim pride, in Stiletto City people behind the wheel were pissed off and proud of it.

Plot took Mummy P. to the library to pick up three books on tape that Ducknik had previously reserved for her. On the way home it was determined that a lunch stop should be made at Nebraska Taco, one of the worst Mexican chains on Earth. Their tacos taste like Mexican food tastes in Nebraska or maybe Istanbul. It is, however, a place Mummy P. likes.

The restaurant is part of a larger mall, and in back is a huge block-wide parking lot. However, two ends of the lot are reserved for valet parking. This leaves only the middle third to be shared by at least fifteen shops.

So, of course, there were no places to park, even in the Handicapped Parking Area where three places had been taken up by two carelessly parked cars (and one of these was suspicious: how many Ferraris do you see with a Handicap Placard on the rear view mirror?).

"Try over there," said Mummy P., so Plot tried over there, which inadvertently took him through one of the valet areas. The attendant, who was sitting in his car, looked up and waved his arms. Plot figured he'd just drive through and exit on the other side. No luck. The exit had been blocked by an illegaly parked pickup truck. So Plot had to turn around.

But as he did so, the parking attendant sped towards Plotnik in his car (he could have walked the twenty or thirty feet, but no, he drove). arms waving wildly, screaming something inaudible. He then stopped his car directly in front of Plottie so he could not move.

The attendant opened his car door, at which point a woman tried driving into the same area from the other end. The attendant saw her, looked at Plotnik, looked at the woman, looked back at Plotnik, left his car blocking Plot's exit and slowly walked over to yell at the other woman. Much hand waving ensued down by the woman's car.

The normally serene and scholarly Plotnik was floored by the man's rudeness. "Mom, would you mind if I honk the horn," he finally said and Mummy P. said "I can't believe you waited this long."

So Plot sat on the horn until the battery was just about dead and the horn down to a weak whimper. (Plot didn't know horns do that.)

The attendant finally walked back to his car, glared at Plotnik, removed a few red traffic cones and backed his car into a space. Plot could have just driven by. Instead, he rolled down his window, stopped and said: "You know that this is your last day working here, right? That was the rudest thing I've ever seen anybody do in a parking lot. I'll be on the phone with your boss as soon as I return to my fancy office. Why, you..."

Plot was enjoying dishing up this aromatic ladle of bull-loney, AS IF he were actually going to call Mr. Parking Associates of America. But he stopped enjoying it when the attendant, who turned out, on closer inspection, to be considerably older than Plotnik, and wearing a frayed cap that looked like it came from an ancient offshoot of the Austro-Hungarian Army, said, in a very recently arrived Eastern European accent: "Sir, I am so sorry, my boss, he say, I must not allow, you see, dis woman, she want in, and I cannot, not know what to do, oh, please, sir, I sorry..."

What ruins a nice dish of self righteous indignation faster than a few spoonsful of hearfelt contrition?

So Plotnik drove out of the parking lot, but now Mummy P. was hungry, and she gets, ah, a little off-kilter when she hasn't eaten right on time, and they hadn't been able to park in order to get her her Omaha Boiled Taco.

They grabbed a burger. Now fast forward a few hours. Mummy P. is taking a nap. Ducknik is doing some mending. Plot says: "I've got a document to edit. I'll head down to the internet cafe." He has forgotten that traffic is so bad you can't piss down Shmaurel Canyon without hitting three Lexuses and the bodies of two run-over bald eagles.

The road is stoped. No one is moving. After getting nowhere for ten minutes or so, Plot gives up, does a U-Turn and heads back to Mummy P.'s on a side street, at which point a guy with a bluetooth headset on his ear flies out of a parking place without looking. Plot sees him at the very last second, desperately turns his wheel hard left, accelerates across the street and screeches to a halt, somehow not smashing into the car parked on the other side of the street. He waits for the sound of ripping fenders and burst radiators -- but there is none.

Plot spins around in his seat and the guy who pulled out without looking GIVES PLOTNIK THE FINGER. He waves his arms as if this were Plotnik's fault, and then raises THE NATIONAL BIRD!

Ooooooooooooooh, you shouldn't na done dat, Pilgrim.

Mummy P.'s car is 90 degrees to the road, blocking both sides of traffic, but Plot has had it. He is no longer the exalted, contemplative, problem-solving leader of a minor Western Religion. He is Michael Douglas in that movie with the baseball bat and the Korean convenience store owner. He throws open his car door and stomps over to the other driver, who is still quivering behind his steering wheel (Plot notices with satisfaction that the other driver appears to be smaller than he is -- he is probably the assistant accountant for a bankrupt headstart group. He has also furtively whipped off his bluetooth headset.)

Behind Plotnik is a full head of scalding steam. "WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?" Plotnik demands, referring not to the traffic faux pas but THE FINGER, as well as the entire motion of indignation from this dingbat that accompanied it.

"...but I didn't even hit you," the guy says.

"NO YOU DIDN'T HIT ME! THERE IS NO HARM DONE AT ALL YOU PATHETIC PRICK! BUT WHY DID YOU GIVE ME THE FINGER? ME? AND WHY WERE YOU TALKING ON YOUR CELL PHONE?"

The guy isn't feeling very good right now. "...i wasn'ttalkingonmycellphone," he says, but he doesn't mean it very much.

Plotnik has suddenly lapsed into the vernacular. Why? It is probably a bit more foreful.

"YO! N WHY D'YOU HIDE YO EARPIECE DEN? YO?"

A baleful apologetic nod.

"YADDA YADDA YADDA SOME MORE SILLY WORDS SHOUTED AT HIGH VOLUME)."

"...I guess I should have looked," the guy says, lips pursed.

"Well, OK," Plotnik says, himself again, satisfaction achieved. "That's all I wanted to hear."

The guy sighs, shakes his little combover head.

"Shit happens," he says.

"Shit happens," Plotnik smiles. The other guy shrugs his shoulders.

Plotnik climbs back into his car and decides he has to go home now because if he drives anywhere else more bad things will happen. So that's what he does.

Another fast forward. Last night Plot, Duck and Mummy P. go out to dinner. Plotnik has downloaded a Restaurants.com coupon for a restaurant close to her house. But when they all walk in, the place smells so bad they all walk out.

"Now what?" Ducknik says.

"We could go to Nebraska Taco," says Mummy P.