Last week I was waiting at a traffic light and as is usual for me I check out the cars to my right and left to see who is listening to music with headphones, who is texting, who is just sitting there staring straight ahead (pretty much no one) and who is frothing at the mouth because in any crowd at a red light at least one driver generally seems to be on the verge of a psychotic break.
To my right is your garden variety huge huge huge SUV. It is driven by a sour looking woman with white earbuds who is arduously typing a text into her phone. Her lips are all squeezy and pursed out and her brow is furrowed and she has these weirdly tiny hands and I am suddenly reminded of what a Tyrannosaurus Rex would look like using a calculator.
Her car is a Ford Expedition. I smirk. The Expedition is billed as providing [please use a deep voice when reading the next three words] "Confidence and Comfort." The propaganda shows it with a backdrop of a lovely forest, a backdrop of a lovely ocean, and towing a giant boat. Yes. This is the car that you take to travel to distant unspoiled wilderness where you drop your powerboat into the water of a clear lake and then pollute the bejesus out of the area with your noise and fumes. Except the most strenuous trip this spotless dingless SUV has ever made was to the Pottery Barn at the Stanford Mall. Then I see her license plate and it is a play on the word...
LEGEND.
I laugh out loud. There is something so incredibly sad and pathetic (but funny!) about a person sitting in a metal box and awkwardly tapping at a phone who self-identifies as "legend." Fortunately since bicycles are pretty much invisible she doesn't see me laughing.
But the best view turns out to be to my left. Here a crabby looking guy on a shitty motorcycle (my co-workers have fancy motorcycles so I know a cheap craptastic one when I see it) is glowering at the world. He has a basic model motorcycle helmet on his head and the helmet has a carefully lettered slogan and the slogan is:
I AM THE SHIT THAT HAPPENS.
And all this time I've been blaming our two cats!
Seriously. Seriously? "I am the shit that happens?" What the fuck does that even mean? All it means to me is a long curving brown growing pile of stank. My brain starts helpfully suggesting different images of shit happening and it's about as disgusting as you might expect but it is also really funny so I stand there laughing so hard that I have to unclip on both sides. I laugh until the light turns green and then I weakly wobble off towards home.
There is nothing so filled with potential for humor as a totally humorless automobile.
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