Phil Elmore: Individual Authoring Services

"Always grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph, sink your thumbs into his windpipe in the second, and hold him against the wall until the tag line."
- Paul O'Neil

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Copyright © 2003-2004
Phil Elmore, all rights reserved.

Don't Make Me Pull Over
July 2003

Excuse me, sir?

Hi. I'm the guy in the car behind you. I have a few things I need to tell you.

I don't care if you're Irish. I don't care if you're Italian. I don't care, so help me, if you've got a Baby on Board (and please, do us all a favor and acknowledge that the 1980s ended).

I don't want to know that you voted for the guy or gal in office now during the last election. Chances are that I hate that politician, whomever he or she may be, and if you voted for him or her I am going to be sorely tempted to accelerate to ramming speed and voice my complaint over your political choices. If you voted for the politician who LOST the last election, that's even worse -- because nobody wants to be reminded of past political failures.

I'd like to dress myself up like some sort of black-clad ninja commando, complete with utility belt, and sneak around my neighborhood at night with a putty knife, scraping obsolete and otherwise moot political bumper stickers off the bumpers of parked cars. And let me tell you another thing, buddy: if you've got an outdated LAWN SIGN for some past political event still sticking up out of your yard, I can't be held responsible for any bricks, rocks, or flaming bags of unpleasantness hurled through your windows or left with pride on your doorstep.

But I digress.

I don't want to know your views on abortion, pro or con. Driving behind you, I don't need to know that God is your copilot, because I find it hard to believe God drives five miles under the speed limit in no-passing zones. I like to think the Omnipotent Source of All knows when His turn signal is on and doesn't let it blink for blocks at a time.

I don't care if you've got a silver Jesus Fish, A Darwin Fish with Feet, a bigger Jesus Fish labeled Truth eating the Darwin Fish, or a fish the size of a Buick eating your entire car. Driving behind you, I don't want to know ANYTHING about you. I just want you to recognize that the angry man flashing his high beams at you in your rear view mirror has SOMEPLACE TO BE TODAY and doesn't really care to get into the biography of your life, scattered in eight-inch strips across the back of your car.

Pull over, already. Don't make me do it for you.