There but for the greed of God...

Photo: Pinkbelt

Oh Jenny.
Let me live inside your skin.
Just for a day.

Just to see how the world looks as it looks at art.

Too old to drive.

The only major accident I've ever been in happened three months after getting my very first car. Going 27 mph down a wide residential street on a cool, clear day, and out from a side street comes a 92 year old man, driving a rusting Buick and under the assumption that stop signs had nothing to do with him. The front of my car slammed into his passenger side door before I even had time to brake. And later, before the police came, as I stood spitting obscenities in this weird, half-sob of a voice ("My car {choke} My new FUCKING car!"), the 92 year old sat shaking his head and muttering, "Oh, oh, it's okay. I've done this before. They can fix that."

The people in power, all those 70 year-olds in suits with red and blue ties, would have seen the situation and said, "We should enact stricter legislation governing 16 year old drivers!" No one ever wants to admit that they're the problem.

But the problem, as anyone who's been trapped behind a crawling Cadillac with a perpetually blinking left-turn signal for ten miles or been cut off at an intersection by a white wig peeking over the steering wheel, is the aging hoards of boomers and their parents.

They are simply too old to drive.

Nation-wide laws need to be in effect right now, mandating that every person over 65 be tested every 2 years before renewing a drivers license. And I'm not saying give them an eye exam and pat them along, clutching a card. I'm saying put them in a car with a live person to witness just how far along their dementia is and whether or not they'll be likely to mow down a sidewalk of farmer's market customers in the near future. Every 2 years. Hawaii should be commended for being one of the only states so far to take this kind of stance.

It'll be a shame when the nothing that's happening here on the mainland turns into a nightmare on every freeway.

Post-Obvious.

I never update.