Drive by photographing
On the drive home from Winterthur today, Ed (the driver) had a minor spot of bother with a driver going too fast behind him and expecting him to move aside gracefully and another car who didn’t want to let him come over into the middle lane. He sped up a little and managed to merge into the middle lane in front of the accelerating car while the manic speeding cell-phone clutching car behind him flashed past. Normal road stupidity, you know and a lot less noticeable than Helena in the back seat howling “The pee is coming! Oh, no it isn’t!” Ed drove. I knitted while gazing out the window and trying not to look at what I was doing because that makes me car sick. A few minutes later the vehicle that had been trying to keep us from coming over pulls alongside us and the driver (really, the driver) curved his right hand out the window and took a photograph of us. We were surprised and a tiny bit unsettled. Why was he photographing us at 65 miles an hour? To use as evidence in his police report? To include in his “Stupid Drivers” blog (which, although imaginary, offended me)? Perhaps, I suggested, he thought we were celebrities.
“Look, Ma. It’s that girl from that movie. And she’s with that guy.”
“What movie, Bubba?”
“You know, that movie that had that guy in it and they did that thing where they were, you know?”
“You sure that’s her?”
“Sure”
“Aw sure, I see her. Quick, here’s the camera. Get her picture.”
“What, while we’re driving? Like them Papa Ratty people did to Diana?”
“Hurry up Bubba, before she stops sneezing.”
Click.
Well. it’s possible. But what actually happened is that I asked Ed to speed up so I could lean out the window and ask why the Samuel heck they had taken a photograph of us. The other driver must have been watching us because he rolled down his window, stuck his arm out and pointed twice at the ground before hitting the pedal and coasting off at an easy 85 mph down I95. Really, I think my idea for a rear windscreen mounted programmable scrolling LED display would have come into its own here because he could have just had his copilot type up a message which would have explained what pointing twice at the ground might mean. “You’re going down.” “Hit the dirt.” “Go to hell, flyboy.” “This lane is mine and don’t you forget it.” Honestly, it could have been anything.
A little later I turned right round to try and pacify an increasingly shrill Helena and found that about two feet of my skirt had been shut in the door. Was it the sight of this flapping fabric that had so titillated our drive by photographers? Could half a yard of Indian print cotton flapping in the interstate breeze have provoked such mirth that they felt compelled to record it forever in pixellated brilliance? It seemed the most logical explanation but still left us feeling bemused and capable of reaching only one conclusion.
People are weird.
I love this post, Stunts! God, I have wished so many times for the rear-mounted LED. I’d probably end up writing obscene things on it, though. It’s probably better that all the things we want to say are kept safely in the car. But what about pre-programmed things like, “Turn your blinker off, you moron” or “If I wanted a colonoscopy, I’d go to a doctor” or “Your bare feet propped up on the dashboard/dangling out the window are REALLY TURNING ME ON”?
I hope your skirt is OK.