February 3, 2001

  • I was out driving last night a bit disgruntled about another inconclusive week in the life of…when I came to a four-way intersection governed by a traffic light.

    Damn it—a red light!  Just another negative metaphor cast in the path of…


    I really didn’t want to stop and since it was a rather insignificant intersection of two innocuous streets with no other traffic upon them at the time , I thought; *what the hell*….


    But I didn’t act.  I couldn’t act.  Don’t know why. So I sat immobile.  And waited.  No, it was not an interminable wait. Just an average wait, a normal play-with-the-stereo, check-out-the-neighborhood wait.


    Until something very unusual happened.


    As the light started to change to amber to provide me with my awaited green, another car on the crossing road rapidly approached the intersection from the left, slammed to a halt, and—this made my day—the driver, now in my view, pointed a black remote control thingy at the traffic signal, clicked it in the now familiar channel-changing flip-dip motion, and my green light, which I had a chance to behold for all of a half second, disappeared!


    And he instantly had the green!  He, he had stolen *my* green and the right-of-way!


    I thought: What?!!! and Who?!!! I mean, this guy had an On-Demand Traffic Signal Remote and who the hell has ever heard of that? So, as he zoomed past through the intersection, I glared at his car for any unusual and/or explanatory characteristics, but it was unmarked and unremarkable—then gone. 


    Meanwhile, I was then double stuck at this nondescript intersection. But  bored?  Oh, no!  I began to intensely scrutinize the traffic signal, the lines leading to it, and all poles around it for some indication of an antenna, or sensor, or some sort of receiver that could explain the function of the apparent new technology I had just witnessed.    But the signal device and all the peripherals to it at this rather bland intersection suggested no improvisation or innovation whatsoever. It looked just like an ordinary low-budget lamp on a switch governed by a local box timer. 


    So what the hell!  Government?  Alien?  Back to the drawing board or back to the future?  I wanted to scream: *Come back d00d and share the technology!*   But apparently he had also used some remote scream control thingy on me because I didn’t even let out a peep.

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