While I have lived in the Dallas area for 82 percent of my life, there are still some things I do not understand about the region, such as why no one can drive except me.
Jessica Burgess
Clearly Unedited
How can the highways be such mystical places? How can the laws of logic and physics not apply? How can PT Cruisers be legal, seeing as how they are criminally ugly?
Mostly, I am puzzled by the Dallas North Tollway, the main way I get to work and back. Why, for example, must it cost 75 cents to drive five miles on it? I pay taxes and therefore have an all-encompassing right to drive wherever I want for free. In fact, based on how much I pay in taxes, a winged chariot should tow my car behind its fiery steeds far above the rest of the traffic.
Also, why are there so many people on the road during business hours? Don't you people have jobs? I am allowed to be on the road at 11 a.m., but you are not. Get to work. Stay off my road. I am very busy and important.
And if you must be on the road during my private driving hours, why are you going so fast? While I tool along in the middle lane at a – frankly, daring – 59 mph, I am passed on both the right and left by vehicles clearly exceeding the speed limit by a significant amount.
I glare disapprovingly at your dangerous vrooming! The speed limit signs clearly say "55 mph." Therefore, instead of driving 80 mph, you should have left earlier. I've got your license number and will track you down and call your mother.
Actually, I am pretty frightened about building up a huge karmic debt by pointing and snickering every time I see a police officer pull someone over. "HA-ha," I shout, in my best Nelson-from-The Simpsons laugh as I do a little dance in my bucket seat. But soon, I fear, I will pay.
The last time I got a speeding ticket was in 1997, on Christmas Eve. I was going 32 in a 20 on a college campus. Which was closed and abandoned for the holidays, thus dramatically reducing the number of potential victims my dangerous high-speed antics could have claimed. Hmph.
But even though it's been almost a decade since I've gotten a speeding ticket, I still freeze up when I see a police car. Because of my massive and unreasonable guilt complex, I am afraid that I will be pulled over and my car will be searched and they will find dead prostitutes in my trunk that I have no memory of putting there.
Then they will haul me off to jail in the most undignified manner imaginable: in a PT Cruiser.
Putting dead prostitutes in Jessica's trunk would NOT be a funny joke. E-mail her at jburgess@quickdfw.com.
