Taxi Driver

So, I drove the Taurus to work this morning. The Taurus is a shitty car. I apologize for the language. I tried to think of another word that would accurately describe the Taurus, but shitty was really the only word that fit. We got the Taurus for free from Mark's grandma. I am very thankful that we got the car when we did, but that doesn't change the fact that it is unreliable and prone to malfunctioning. One summer we had to replace the transmission and the engine within four weeks of each other. Later, Mark had the Taurus taken to a dealership so that they could do an inspection. When he got back after the inspection with all the paper work his comment was, "My car is awesome. It's missin' some parts."

Anyway, in light of all this, one of my favorite past times when driving the Taurus (other than praying fervently that it doesn't break down on a major artery) is looking for cars that are shittier than the Taurus. This morning, I noticed a taxi on hwy 55 as I approached I94. A) The taxi was, in fact, a shittier car than the Taurus. B) But what really caught my eye was how the taxi was fishtailing all over two lanes. This made me wonder about the state of the tires on the taxi. No one else on the road was fishtailing, yet this taxi couldn't adjust its course at all without it's back end whipping from one side to the other.

As if the condition of the car weren't bad enough, I shortly realized that the person driving the taxi was contributing to the overall disaster. First, the taxi decided not to get into the lane that turns onto I94 until it was actually stopped at the light. I magnanimously let the taxi into the correct lane in front of me (although, I have to say that one of the side effects of driving the Taurus is that I get a bit more belligerent behind the wheel because I really don't care if anyone hits me). The taxi driver continued to be obnoxious as we merged with traffic. Instead of zipping into traffic, which is the appropriate merging procedure, the taxi passed the car that had zipped in front of it and then tried to merge into traffic after cutting that car off.

It offends me when people don't follow the rules of the zip (think zipper). The zip is what allows people on the road to coexist happily and without accident. When people disregard appropriate zip protocol, I almost take it as a personal insult. As a side note, people in Fargo do not understand how to zip. It is one of the reasons that, even though traffic is worse in Mpls, it is actually more dangerous to take the interstate in Fargo.