Traffic karma
Sunday, August 27, 2006, 2:05 PM

For a girl living in L.A., I have pretty good traffic karma. The tread on my Mary Jane sneakers still kicks butt, helping to keep my feet on the sidewalk and my body away from more than one driver with a red haze in his eyes. I’ve come close to biting a BMW grill before, but what can I say? I have good traffic karma.

I pass three traffic lights. If I catch all three of them green, I’m psyched for the rest of the day. The first light doesn’t really count because they’ve been doing sewer work ever since I moved here at the end of February, so there’s no thru traffic. And while walking across the road when the light is red makes me feel conspicuous and to want to say hee, hee, hee to the drivers who have to stop for the red, I don’t because once the light turns green, the first car in line usually beats me to the other side of the road before I even get to the third hee. Actually, I’ve heard a few drivers gun their engines and it always makes me laugh. It’s temporarily liberating and that’s better than no liberation at all.

The second light is at a major crossroad where lots of car honking goes on. Woe betide any driver who turns left on a red light if there’s a car hoping to make it through the intersection on a reddy-yellow. Geesh, my heart’s slammed up into my throat many times because of this kind of angry driver honking and each time I think, “Gee, I’m so glad I don’t have to get up two hours early just so I can drive to work.”

I catch the green here probably forty percent of the time. If I walk like an arm-swinging dervish or like one of the Comcast Slowskie turtles, I’ll catch it, but I don’t do either that well unless I'm concentrating. I’m too lost in thoughts about how Keanu Reeves looked in the The Replacements, wondering if maybe my slacks shrunk in the dryer or were hemmed a wee bit too high and yeowl, how bright my red hair looks in the store windows I’m passing. So it’s a crapshoot, which means my traffic karma dips or gains depending on this one light.

I’m home free approaching the third. It’s on one of those side streets that make drivers go gray waiting for the green light. Sucks for them, doesn’t for me. One day when it was raining and the old man was snoring, I walked right out into the intersection on a red. Yeah, damn, WHAT I’d just do? Whoops. Didn’t see anything but the umbrella over my head. Could’ve been killed. Paralyzed.

Good traffic karma must be mine.

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In other news, I haven't been able to upload any craptastically-nifty photos for my last two posts, so I guess I have to rely on just words to create the ambiance in your head. Well. I never.
1 Did the Unhingey Jiggy Engage in Unhingenosity
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