Lessons of the street

Lessons of the street

by Garrison Frost

Life provides us with a lesson to learn every few minutes. Why, we are hardly out of the womb before we learn one of the most important lessons we’ll ever encounter: that doctors can’t be trusted. And as we grow older, we learn that fire burns our skin, falling on the ground hurts and that grandmothers can be conned into practically anything.

Personally, I cannot count the important life lessons that I’ve learned simply by driving the streets of Los Angeles and the South Bay. For instance, from driving a 40-year-old rustbucket around for many years, I’ve learned that a luxury SUV that will normally brush aside a subcompact to gain a few seconds’ advantage will cower at the sight of what appears to be an uninsured driver. And from suffering on the San Diego Freeway, I’ve definitely learned the value of a good shortcut.

But there are many other important lessons to be learned on the streets, or should I say, in traffic:

Three right turns are often better than a left.
Grant Avenue in Redondo Beach taught me that if you drive down any street long enough, you will eventually hit a shopping mall.
The best pizza is the one that drives itself to you.
Letting someone merge in front of you is one of life’s truly selfless gestures, as you will never be rewarded for doing, but will often be punished.
When searching for parking by the beach on a hot summer day there are only two kinds of drivers, the quick and the still driving.
There are only two kinds of people who park in Hermosa Beach: the quick and the ticketed.
Often the most dependable car is a bicycle.
At blind corners, someone is always coming.
Pedestrians want to die, but it is our job to not give them what they want.
“Four-way stop” is just another way of saying “trust no one.”
The children of rich people play in the street because their parents are too property-value-obsessed to build them backyards to play in.
He who drives behind a gardening truck has an immense amount of patience.
Slowing down to look at the wreckage of an accident on the side of a freeway is a right for those who have had to grind through bumper-to-bumper traffic to reach that point.

(April , 2007)