colorado drivers: a study

Recently I started rehearsing a new play in Denver, called ‘And the Winner Is...’ by Mitch Albom, the guy who wrote ‘Tuesdays With Morrie.’ It’s down at Vintage Theatre, the place where I did Streetcar last summer, and so I’ve started doing the drive back and forth to Denver again.

I love the people I’m working with, and I’m having a lot of fun, so that makes it less heinous to drive down. However the driving has afforded me the opportunity to notice and categorize the various types of drivers we have here in loverly Colorado. Since I find myself yelling at the same people over and over again, I thought I would share with you who they are. If you can think of any types I have overlooked, or if you ARE one of these types, or one I’ve overlooked, please to share. :)

1. Mr.Speedy -- I generally only see or notice this guy late at night on the way back from Denver, but he is the young fellow who thinks ‘The Fast and the Furious’ is a how-to manual for living. He sees Vin Diesel as a sort of Mr. Miyagi, full of clever life lessons, like ‘If you’re not out of control, you’re not in control.’ Erm, okay...

yes, that's cardboard. exactly as useful as the same fiberglass mods on a car that can't go over 95 mph.

Mr. Speedy drives a tricked-out piss-yellow Civic, with endless mods that he pays for by working at Domino’s and living with his parents, thus saving on rent. He is so desperate for attention and validation that he will attempt to bait anyone into racing by cruising alongside them and preventing them from passing, even if the only competition is a rusted-out Chevy Impala.

Sample insult: ‘Come on, Mr. Speedy, make up your mind! How fast do you wanna go? Your dick ain’t getting any bigger!’

2. Trucknutz -- This name has nothing to do with whether or not the said driver actually has Trucknutz, the delightful and oh-so-subtle masculinity substitution you can attach to the rear bumper of your vehicle (now in chrome!!!) in order to remind the world that...er...that your vehicle is male? Or that you are male? That you have a tiny, flaccid, wrinkled penis that no actual female is interested in?

redneck in training. i believe that children are the future.

I’m not real sure what they’re for. At any rate, there is a certain type of Colorado driver who drives a pick-up with a toolbox in back, with or without Trucknutz, and is very determined to prove he is a bigger man than everyone else. If he is in the left lane going 74 mph, then by God that’s fast enough for you too. If you go to pass him, he will speed up until you are blocked in, then he will slow down again. Oh, and the left lane is His Territory. God forbid you should pass him on the right. If you do catch him unawares and get by him on the right, he will ride your Trucknutless tail for miles, no doubt suffering a apoplectic fit of insecurity and emasculation, his withered genitals shrinking ever upward and finally crawling up into his abdomen where they will atrophy and die, thus making him even angrier.

Sample insult: Let’s go, Trucknutz! Get the fuck over! We’re all very impressed.’

3. Ms. Minivan Lady -- These creatures are most often seen in minivans, but can be spotted sometimes in SUVs and other vehicles. They generally have six to eight precious little snowflakes in the back, and as their erratic driving style makes plain, they spend most of the journey facing the backseat, yelling at someone rather than focused on the road. They are unpredictable animals; they speed up and slow down randomly, weaving back and forth from lane to lane with no discernable plan or intention behind the moves.



It might be imagined that they are generally not as aggressive as other drivers, but this would be a mistake. The wild, random fits of aggression they display are even more pronounced, as they have no clear rationale behind them and are in fact merely random signals sent from the brain to the feet and hands between arguments with aforementioned snot-nosed snowflakes in the back. The brain thinks: ‘Hmm. It seems like I’m supposed to be focusing on something...like piloting this 2000-pound guided missile...I forget. Oh well! Say, the left lane seems like it might be fun! Zoom!’

She may wait until fifty yards before her exit to suddenly weave across four lanes of traffic, completely oblivious to the major pile-up she has just caused, as she’s more worried about little Tyler, who just spilled his grape juice on Morgan’s new white jacket.

Sample insult: ‘You can’t be serious, Minivan Lady! 54 miles an hour? Pull your head outta yer ass!’

4. Wyoming -- Now, I’m positive that Wyoming is home to a diverse and interesting populace. But there is a certain driving style that those Wyoming residents who come south have consistently displayed. It is mainly characterized by stubbornly, constantly, permanently and forever sitting in the left lane. No matter what. Always. If they aren’t in the left lane, they freak out like a meth addict in the cold and flu aisle at the pharmacy. (‘So...much...Sudafed!!’)

I'm pretty sure that's a Wyoming plate.

Even if they have no discernable plans for passing the car in front of them, or even going faster than the person they were just behind, these creatures will dart out from the right lane at the first opportunity, even if that means cutting you off when you’re going 85. There are certain similarities between the behaviors of the Trucknutz species and that of Wyomings -- i.e. the insecurity, the need for sitting in the left lane. But while Trucknutz only come in youngish male, Wyomings can be male or female, young or old. They, too, feel that it is a sign of inadequacy if they let someone pass. It pisses them off if you do manage it somehow. In fact they drive as if they are pretty much always pissed off. But then, they live in Wyoming. Wouldn’t you be angry too?

Sample insult: ‘Jesus Christ, Wyoming! Do another bump and then see if you can find the gas pedal! I’m dying back here!’

evil I-25

so, i'm driving back down to denver last night, for callbacks for '18 holes,' and somewhere between windsor and the first loveland exit, the car in front of me runs over a folded-up, mangled old sign. it flaps up and i am on top of it before i can do anything about it. but whereas the thing burst out from under the car in front of me, when it got under my car (a ford exploder, mind you, with some pretty high clearance) it gets jammed into the frame right by the rear right wheel.

so i'm looking back out of my rearview, hearing this godawful scraping sound, and i see sparks flying out the back of my car.

lovely.

i pull off the freeway, and attempt to dislodge the sign, but it's jammed in there pretty good. finally some guy stops and gives me a hand (thanks, random stranger in the white pickup) and we get the thing free. of course, now i don't know if the brake line or fuel tank or anything unimportant like that has been damaged, and i'm not going to find out on the way down to denver.

so i didn't make it to the callback. :( i'm going to call the director today and see where they are at, if they are doing another round of callbacks or what.

ah well. at least the thing didn't fly up off the road into my windshield.

***

anyway, here's a dream i had last night. i think i might be under some stress...

03.11.08

I am leaving a late-night party of some kind that has gotten out of hand. It is a night of celebration all over the city, perhaps the world. But I left the place where I was and decided to walk home, although it was a couple of miles.

The city/town seems to be State College-esque, dark streets lined with older, conservatively built houses. I cut through a wooded area at one point, and slog through some mud, but I am of high spirits, and dial my phone to inform someone I am on my way home. I come out of the woods behind an old strip mall/office complex, a low, long building made of brick and steel, circa 1965. I circle around the building and am walking through its narrow parking lot along the street when I see the car for the first time. it is a long, older vehicle, perhaps a Taurus or something like that. It is careening back and forth across the roadway, with only its parking lights on, not changing speed or seeming to even attempt to avoid parked cars. I watch and begin to back away from the road as it continues its approach when I realize that it probably isn’t going to stop, and that it certainly wouldn’t stop just because a person was on the sidewalk.

The car finally slams into a triangle splitting the road into two, and comes to rest on the curb there. I tell my friend that I will call them back, hang up and start to dial 911 as the driver gets out. It is a big shirtless white guy, completely out of it, but with a drugged determination about him. He gets out and stumbles toward the building, where people have now come out to see what’s going on. I am at the far end of the building, and so I am not in his line of fire as I tell the police dispatcher there is an obviously drunken man who wrecked a car. But then he begins to harass the bystanders, berating them, asking what they’re staring at. He begins to get physical, shoving some of them around, and threatening them, and I duck around the corner of the building and make it clear that the situation is more urgent for the police. When I peek back around the corner, he is swinging a hoe or a rake or something at some people in the crowd, when finally the flashing blue lights pull up.

Next we see the man, now hastily dressed in a ripped green sweater and a t-shirt he found somewhere being pulled out of the basement of the building in cuffs. We (the crowd) commiserate on the situation, relating our versions of the story, pat each other on the back etc.

At some point, however, I am at a huge, sprawling chemical plant. I get out of the car, an old Thunderbird or some such, with a guy who looks suspiciously like a young Ray Liotta, and who holds a gun on some guy. We lead him toward the back of this plant area, which is seemingly abandoned, past several fences and gates that are wide open, and past a final row of curtain-like cloths that are hanging from a line a few dozen feet before we reach the back wall.

I hang back as my partner takes the guy back behind these flapping curtains, which don’t really cover up what is happening back there, and he shoots the guy in the head.

I remember I wasn’t really disturbed by this; it was an inevitability.

But I turn and am walking back toward the car when something goes wrong. The plant’s sirens and lights begin to flash as if there is a shutdown or something. A crew of workers streams out into the yard, which is a muddy, rocky, rolling area, and proceed to throw the football around. They are diving in the muck, sliding through the standing water, not caring.

But my partner is trapped somehow behind the curtains at the end of the plant’s grounds, and I have to get the car and drive up there and get him. I get in the car and start to ease my way past the workers and their game, across a gulley and up a rock face that protrudes from the muck. At some point I explain to the footballers what’s going on and they get out of the way gladly.

But by the time I get the car near where I need to go, the next round of plant procedures has started. There are sirens and lights a plenty now, and gates swing closed. The footballers, when I look back, have all disappeared, taken shelter somewhere. The car gets stuck and I proceed on foot, only to be stopped when a giant sprayer, like an agricultural watering system sprays out a huge burst of pink, jellied fluid, like a thick antifreeze, spraying down the whole area like a lawn sprinkler. I turn and flee, passing through several of these sprinklers, and make it outside the gates. I go back in several times, but I am beaten back by the jellied chemicals every time.

I have no idea how I will save my partner now.