August 19, 2010

• Here In My Car, I Feel Safest Of All…. *Synth Riff, Smack* In Caars…

  The Beast Van is being fixed this week, little by little, but I debate internally how much it’s both unnecessary and infuriatingly necessary it really is, in this day and age.
  I’ve been disturbed a bit lately (and by lately, I mean either the past six months that my lover and I have been without motor transportation, or perhaps the past however many years that I’ve known of the car culture) on how much emphasis the average American puts on the fact that he has a vehicle. If you choose not to have a car, you are pitied, as you are obviously too impoverished to vroom vroom vroom. Back in the winter, I had so many people try to give me a ride if they saw me walking, and even sit there in their heated SUV’s and argue with me, just because I wanted to walk. A lot of jobs decide whether or not they want to hire you based on whether or not you have your own transport (I’m lucky with my job, since it takes just as long to walk, depending on weather and traffic conditions, as it is to drive, so I get short listed for work  over other more motor-abled individuals). Unless you live in a metropolitan area, it’s impossible to be a pedestrian, as everything you need will not be five blocks away or less. And even in a metropolitan area, it’s still kind of hard, because it’s not safe after a certain hour. In smaller places,they won’t build sidewalks in certain places unless it’s absolutely needed. It’s just strange, the way it’s so much more convenient to drive somewhere than to use your own two legs. But why? It’s terrific exercise. It makes you slow down a bit and enjoy your surroundings. And it’s easy, unless you’re carrying two gallons of milk and a stack of slippery magazines or something. I watch overprivileged women (ha! That’s not even a word, according to my spell check! Only underprivileged!) get out of their vehicles that they drove from the good side of town to run at the track here on campus. They might run about two miles, maybe a mile, before they go get a coffee, when they could have done that just, well, running to the track. And it just makes me wonder, how the world would change if people only drove if they really needed to. Would obesity be a problem? Would people be as greedy? Would they punish their bodies with diets and drugs and such, if they knew they needed to use it to get somewhere?

  • 6:57 pm
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