New Biggest Driving Pet-Peeve

Sorry to disappoint all of you, but my football post will have to wait. Just a quick thanks to one of my loyal readers for cutting my research time down by several hours.

Meanwhile, my nephew's bris was on Sunday morning. I'm proud to say that Binyamin Lev ben Yisroel Dov has entered into the covenant of Abraham, our forefather.

Here's a quickie. When I told one of my friends the name of my nephew, he was shocked because my brother and his father have the same Hebrew name, Yisroel Dov. And he said that it was a shame that his father's English name isn't as frum as my brother's, since his father is a Rabbi. Az then we got onto the topic of rabbis with secular names. Here are the ones we came up with. I will leave out last names so as not to embarrass anyone:
Rabbi Cary _____
Rabbi Dale _____
Rabbi Shawn Blair _____
Rabbi Harlan _____
I would love to hear some more from all of you; I think it's hilarious.

And now I will address the topic of my post. Before I start, I'll just say that it has been a pet-peeve of mine for a while, but now it's my biggest one. I've been noticing this more and more, recently, but the events of last night really take the cake.

I was driving back from a wedding with three women, and one of them requested to be dropped off on the Upper East Side. No problem, I know the East Side well, az it would only have taken an extra five minutes. The FDR Drive is great; I literally grew up on top of it, but when you're driving northbound you can get into trouble because the exits are spaced far apart. The woman requested to be dropped off on 86th street, az I could either have gotten off at 61st street or 96th street. I decided that 96th street was the better bet, so we just kept going. However, traffic stopped almost instantaneously after the 61st street exit. I turn on the radio and the first thing I hear is "I could give you 100 reasons to avoid the FDR Drive on the north-bound side." Oh good. Az we're sitting in traffic for about 20 minutes when we finally start to approach the 96th street exit. There's a long wait in the right lane because that's where everyone is going to exit. I'm waiting, and waiting, and waiting...and the exit is slowly drawing nearer, and cars from the middle lane are trying to force their way into the exit lane. This one guy tries to cut in front of me into the right lane, but he literally has zero room there, so I honk a few times and inch my way up right behind the car in front of me so the dude can't fit in, and he starts to go absolutely berserk. He screamed several obscenities, including some horrible things about my mother, although the meaning was lost through the two solid windows in between us. If it wasn't really late and raining, I would have asked him politely to retract his statments and apologize for using such language in the presence of women, but I was persuaded to just let him go through.

Here's the point. If you want to pass someone on the road because they're going slowly, you're more than welcome to do so. You're not screwing anybody by speeding up a bit to pass the slow guy. But if cars are lined up to exit, it's horrible manners to speed your way to the front of the line and then cut in. I promise we're not going slowly because we enjoy it. Please wait from the back of the line like everybody else. I don't care if your wife and children are suffering a lingering, rotting death; everyone else is in a hurry too. And the last thing you should be doing is expecting the cars to let you in, as if it's your G-d given right to do this. And also, please please don't honk your horn. I mean, when there are thousands of cars literally inches away from each other, honking your horn will do no good; we're all trying to go as quickly as we can. And also don't use foul language, especially in my car.

Thanks,

Your Friend,

Schmutter