Chapter twenty-one

November 19, 2010

**Note: this post has some strong personal beliefs in it and a lot of ranting. Be warned.**

I’ve been driving for just over eight years and in my eight years I have never noticed – until now – how many jerks there are on the road. Today I was driving to work and not once but twice I was tailed. Now, one must understand: when I was 15 during our annual summer family reunion, my relatives gave me the nickname LFL. What does that stand for? “Lead Foot Lauren.” I drive fast. At least ten over on an average day. Sure, sometimes I take my time and drive the recommended speed limit, but in general I drive a bit speedier.

These two a-holes were tailing me, putting their brights on, and flicking me off while I was going between 75-80 mph…on a highway whose speed limit is 65 mph. Totally unjustified tailing if you ask me. Sure, I could’ve gone faster but I wanted to keep a safe distance between my car and the car ahead of me, you know in case someone ahead of me does something stupid and I have to slam on the breaks. Clearly, the people tailing me don’t have that kind of foresight. My only hope is that they have a real scare where they think in hindsight, “okay, I probably should’ve be on people’s a@$es when I drive because I could’ve died.” I don’t want them to get into an accident…I just want them to pee their pants from trying to avoid one. Is that wrong?

I needed to get that out of my system because, as I said, I was on my way to teach and I am not allowed nor would I want to take my frustrations out on the kids. At least not until they prove that they are wreckless-a-hole drivers.

Another bit of information that has caught my attention, and creeps me to F out, is there are several nuts out in the world who want to hasten the “end of days.” As my parents and I were talking about how our liberties are quickly being taken away by government and TSA nuts (body scans vs intense groping “pat-downs”) the subject of the environment came up.

Now we in the Baker household are liberal progressives and we believe people should try their darndest to preserve and save our Mother Earth from pollution, etc etc blah blah blah. So it shook me to my moral core to hear my mom say there are people out there essentially trying to kill the earth to bring about the second coming of Christ. I’ve been doing some research on this and it sickens me. Truly sickens me! Here is an article from a few years ago if you’d like to read it.

There are other articles out there too, ones that are a bit more recent, but I thought this article explained the issue rather well. Can you believe there are people like this out there?! People who think, “What kind of damage can I do today?” I don’t care what your opinion on the Book of Revelations is – personally I think the book is to be interpreted symbolically rather than literally – but no one, I repeat NO ONE, should consciously do harm to our one and only home in order to bring out the end of days. One could extrapolate those actions as…you guessed it…terroristic threats. And this country of ours does not take those sorts of things lightly, which is why this holiday season, as you fly to visit loved ones, you can choose to either be scanned in a nudey scan or be sexually assaulted as a means of “security.” Tis the season to be jolly, eh?