Hey, is there any way you could not blow the stop sign in front of our house?

That’d be great, thanks. I don’t even need you to stop dead and take a moment to admire the landscape. A rolling stop would be fine. Anything more than just whipping around the corner would be great.

As you know, I’m usually on the other side of this, railing at the drivers whose minds are stuck in first gear along with their cars, but that’s on the highway. I drive like a bat out of hell when I’m on the highway but in a residential neighborhood, I tend to slow down, since there are pedestrians, many of whom are kids walking to school. I figure I should respect the people who live in the neighborhood. Maybe you all could do the same?

I do have empathy for people trying to get the kids to school and they overslept and can’t find their shoes and lunches still need to be packed, etc. But that rolling stop will only take a fraction of a second, and you can make it up on the highway. If you don’t want me blowing a stop sign next to your house, maybe don’t do it near mine? Or if you’re just someone who’s late for work, here’s an idea: Get your act together at home so you can save 0.07 seconds and not have to ignore the stop sign.

Until then, if I see you coming and clearly not slowing down, I’m not going to pause while backing out of my driveway, as I would for other traffic on our street. I’m just going to back out, so if you don’t stop at the stop sign, you’ll stop for my car. I couldn’t care less if that annoys you. You know what annoys me? People blowing a stop sign in a residential neighborhood, especially when it’s next to our house, where we now have a child.

Our street is long and straight and kind of a cut-through for drivers, and some will go too fast over the speed humps, kind of bouncing over them. I’m sure they all resent those speed humps. Hey, asshole, those speed humps are there because of you. They’re to keep people from going too fast down our street, with the ton of kids who live here. But you do you, cowboy!

I hate to sound like Old Man McCurdy, waving his cane out the window at drivers, but it just isn’t a lot to ask for people to make even a rolling stop at a stop sign. You’re not speeding to negotiate a hostage situation; you’re just some schlub on his way to work like everybody else and can afford to lose a fraction of a second. I know it’s rough having to depress your foot slightly on the brake but you can do it. I believe in you.

We need to talk about how we use electronic highway billboards in this country

Well, I guess we don’t need to discuss electronic highway billboards. But I can’t think of anything to write about, so here we are.

I like the billboards that tell me how much time it takes to get to a certain point. This lets me know whether I can relax during my commute on 202 or if I will scream so loud that all the birds will fly out of the trees if I see “6 miles, 16 minutes.”

So it annoys me during the winter weather when all the signs switch over to saying some variation of “Winter Weather—Use Caution.” I know it’s snowing; I can actually see it from my car. If you’re so out of it that you can’t see snow while driving through it, you probably shouldn’t be behind the wheel. It would be much more practical for those billboards to give drivers information on how bad the traffic ahead is so they can plan a different route or mentally prepare themselves to fume as the highway becomes a parking lot.

The Amber alerts are a good use of the signs. I try to memorize the license plate and be on the lookout for the car but then I feel bad because I usually forget the information in a few minutes.

Some of the electronic billboards that say “Don’t drive distracted” can be distracting. The one on I-95 South near the Delaware state line is always bad. I’ll be straining to see if it’s an important message and it’s always like “Don’t drive drunk” or something I’m already not doing. Or it’s some cutesy safety message that is going to get people into an accident as they strain to read it. It’s something about the way it flashes slowly that can be distracting. It might be better just to say nothing and let people drive in peace.  

In conclusion, this concludes our discussion.

Blanche Devereaux

Red pops around the restaurant in women’s skirts and complimentary roses. Out of necessity, there’s me, table for one on Valentine’s Day, far from home at a convention.

Does anyone, I wonder, see the light catch the tungsten of my wedding ring and assume I am some Blanche Devereaux? In half-remembered Golden Girls memory, these lovers might recall the southern widow marking a day with two glasses of champagne to toast the husband no longer there. She sat and sighed at the restaurant, maybe even the table, once theirs.

Do they expect me to ask the host for a rose to lay across the spouse’s empty chair like a coffin? Do they expect me to mumble “Happy Valentine’s Day, darling” as a cinematic tear rolls down my cheek?

Nothing so melodramatic as all that. Husband and son safely at home. He bargains with him to eat another baby carrot, then piggybacks him up to bed. There is no sadness at this table, except that I miss them, but never have to miss them for long.