Ms. Biggie Big Goes To CiCi's

It’s always a bit of a shock to the system when you get used to driving a certain way because you live someplace small and lovely (like Flagstaff) and you are forced to end up driving around someplace large and shitty (like Mesa).

Especially the part of Mesa where I live, which should change it’s name from Mesa to Baby Mexico or Nogales North or something like that. I’ve never driven in Mexico, and from the way people drive around my neighborhood I don’t think I ever want to because, apparently, they don’t have driving laws down there. Or crosswalks. Or brains.

There has to be some kind of rational thought that would cross a mother’s mind before dressing herself all in black and standing in the middle of a 40 MPH road at 11 O’clock on a Tuesday night with a FUCKING BABY CARRIAGE and a 2-year-old in tow. And I’m not talking about a smart-looking 2-year-old (you know, the kind that carries around books about fractal geometry so they can continue their thesis research at the Laundromat), I’m talking about your average, run-of-the-mill 2-year-old with poop in her diaper and a bright future of walking her own kids across the street at 11PM on a Tuesday night thanks to the brilliant example her mother is setting.

I wish I were kidding about that. I’m not. I’ve seen it on more than one occasion, along with other mind-bending feats of mental prowess ranging from seeing 3 guys carrying a shopping cart full of groceries down the street to the countless numbers of young children (5, 6, 7-year olds) riding their bikes in the middle of the street at all hours of the day. And night. Late night. This is not some small residential street in a sleepy town, it’s what’s known as a major thoroughfare where I’m guessing at least 10,000 cars a day pass through. At speed.

Enough about the people walking and riding their bikes, because if it comes down to a confrontation between someone walking and me driving my Durango, I will always win. And I will win twice on Sundays. My car has already proven itself in mortal combat against a deer. Which reminds me, I should probably find an artist to paint a small deer on my front quarter panel and then put a little red X through it, just to dissuade any other deer from challenging my ride to a game of chicken. Maybe I will even embellish the picture by painting the deer the colors of the Texas flag, star and everything.

Now there’s an idea. I just hope I don’t have to commission the same artist to draw a little picture of a person with a red X through it, mostly because I don’t want to go through the process of finding out what state and/or country that person is from so I could pass that on to the artist.

The bottom line is that stupid people are walking everywhere down here and apart from the emotional turmoil I would experience from running down a family of morons, I would probably have the hardest time filling out the paperwork to nominate them for a Darwin Award at the end of the year. That and having to deal with higher insurance rates.

The thing that is the scariest about living down here in Mini Mexico is the fact that NOBODY knows how to drive. I have been genuinely terrified for my life at least 3 times a week down here just because of the way people drive. They come flying up to the ends of the side streets and slam their brakes on at the last second. They change lanes without signaling or really even needing a reason to. And I thought the drivers in Tucson were bad.

So far, though, I have encountered one driver who was so bad that I felt compelled to write about her. She was driving a red Dodge Avenger. Fast. Really fast. I’m guessing she was listening to ‘N Sync or a Backstreet Boys CD and forgot she was in control of a 3,500 pound battering ram. First she drove about 35 though a 15MPH school zone until she caught up with me (I don’t know why she was after me, but it sure seemed like she had an agenda). Then, she stayed right on my tail until we got to where the turn off where we were both turning left.

I was heading to the gym. She was heading to CiCi’s Pizza. The all-you-can-eat buffet. And I guarantee she was going to eat all she could. But only if she could pry herself out of her car. That girl was big. More than just big. Biggie big.

And before anyone jumps all over me about weight discrimination and all that crap, let me cut you off at the pass. I am a big dude. At my last weigh-in I tipped the scales at 290 pounds. I know what it’s like to be big. I’m just not biggie big, because I have always tempered my trips to the all-you-can-eat buffet with 2-3 hour torture sessions in the gym the next day. I don’t get skinny, because I like to eat, but I GUARANTEE I move better than 95% of the 300 pounders in the country.

If I didn’t do that, I could easily cross the line from being big to being BIGGIE BIG, but as it stands, I don’t, so I will pass my judgments on a 400-pounder who almost ran me off the road to get to her coveted pepperoni and cheese. In retrospect, I think she might have been scared that I was going to get the last slice of Cheesy Supreme and she was going to have to wait 5 extra minutes to get the cheese count in her blood to a satisfactory viscosity level. Either that or she was so big she was driving like a maniac to test the theory that she could be her own airbag in a front-end collision.

Only she knows for sure, but after the gym tomorrow I might stop by CiCi’s Pizza and see if they can include a driving instruction booklet with every 10th piece of pizza taken from the buffet. Maybe if she collects enough of those she might read one during the commercials on Maury while waiting for the paternity tests to come through and the next time I see her I won’t be able to see that she’s singing a Justin Timberlake song by reading her lips in my rearview mirror while I’m traveling 45 MPH.

Maybe.

B!

P.S.—I bet if she cuts herself shaving, syrup pours out. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.