Better You Than Me

As much as I love this "Family Guy" clip, I actually hate flying trash when it is on the highway. There are few things in life more terrifying to me than driving down the highway at a fairly high speed and seeing a random plastic bag come rolling down the lane towards you. Seriously, I'd almost rather it be another car. Because what happens next is almost inevitable: the car ahead of you will pass close enough to send it flying back up into the air and straight at your car. Then it is a waiting game to see whether the bag goes under or over your car and if it goes under you have to hold your breath until it reemerges from your undercarriage. Seriously, watching a piece of trash go under your car and then not come back out totally sucks. Because now you have to wonder if you are dragging this thing or if it has gotten itself wrapped around something rather important and is slowly melting, no doubt causing damage which will cost hundreds of dollars to repair. (I guess this says a lot about the level of cars I have owned in my life if I am convinced a plastic grocery bag would have forever ruined how well they drove.) The only benefit of this paranoia is that it has made me very conscious about littering near highways.

Monday morning I was running out to buy one last Christmas present and was heading down Route 128. They've been doing a lot of construction on that part of the highway, which means there are lots of signs, cones and other construction-related material laying around for people to accidentally clip with their cars. (It's one of those projects which has been going on for years and when it is done will leave the road looking exactly the same.) If you've driven on this part of the highway in the last couple of months you know it is not uncommon for some piece of debris to be in the breakdown lane. Also, that morning had been very windy ahead of the temperature changes which came in that night. I can only assume it was these two factors coming together which led to two or three massive wads of police tape to ball up and sit on the side of the highway like modern-day tumbleweeds. I'm not sure what the police needed to mark off, but judging from the size of the bundles my best guess is it was an entire acre of land. This is exactly the kind of thing I would hate to be in the road. The good news for me is that I was able to pass by without incident. However, not everyone shared my good fortune, because less than two miles down the road I was passed by this woman.

Now, it may be a little hard to tell from that photo but beyond the top streamer of police tape which is around 15 feet in length, there is a second strand dragging down along the white line. That lower strand extended much farther - closer to 60 feet long. (I guess that is one way to make sure no one is tailgating you.) Under normal circumstances, like if we were walking down the street, I would like to think that I would assist the woman in untangling herself but there wasn't much I could do to help her at 60 mph. (Clearly, I did the next best thing and took a picture of it.) The only good news was that either it wasn't bothering the driver or she didn't notice because she showed no signs of wanting to pull over and get the tape away from her axle. The last I saw of her she was blissfully continuing down the road as I turned onto Route 24. She may have been hoping that it just flew off on its own, but I hope she eventually stopped to collect all the tape. I know that crawling under your car on the side of a busy highway on Christmas Eve morning is not how anyone wants to start their day, but I can't imagine driving like that for very long is good for the car and pulling it off and then leaving it by the side of the road only makes it someone else's problem.

I have to say, it is very strange to see someone else living out your nightmare scenario. For example, it is one thing to watch a stranger trip - that's just funny. But the second that trip happens as they are walking on stage to deliver a presentation you know they were already nervous about it stops being funny because I think we have all had that fearful moment flash through our brains at one time or another. Seeing another human have to experience it for real is when an entirely new range of emotions kicks in. On the one hand you feel this very strong sense of empathy, because you know how much you don't want that to happen to you. On the other hand you feel a tremendous amount of relief simply because it isn't happening to you. Now, it is entirely possible that the woman driving the car didn't care because she was confident no amount of rouge tape was going to stop her vehicle and she knew that she could wait until she reached her destination to deal with it. If that is the case than I'm almost glad it happened to her because clearly the universe sent this situation to someone equipped to deal with it. I'm sure I would have dealt with it as well, I just don't want to have to. Then again, if people would just make a more conscious effort to clean up after themselves no one would have to deal with it.