Death Drivers for Jesus

I've said before (but elsewhere so it bears repeating here) that if one wishes to see just how rapidly we are becoming a nation of sociopaths, one has to look no farther than at his or her fellow motorists. Check out your city streets, your county roads, state highways and interstates! Hell, check out the bleedin' parking lots while you're at it (then please explain why we call paved areas you drive on "parkways" and paved areas you park on "driveways"). You'll see people so absorbed with their own commute (even those with no particular place to be) that it's almost like they take an active role in preventing you from reaching wherever it is you need to be. I wrote an allegedly amusing brief on this observation once and if I can find it, I'll see about reposting it here. 'Til then, though, I'll just hit the highlights.

Fortunately for your safety, there are a few signs you can spot that generally tell you when you are sharing the road with another driver that is either a sociopath or at least woefully incompetent. First off, driver's skill is inversely proportional to the ratio of driver-size to vehicle driven. So, when you see some obscenely huge SUV or tricked out super-van being driven by someone who can barely see over the dashboard, it's a sign you might just want to take a detour.

There are a myriad of other danger signs for which you should be watchful. But to save space, I'll just touch on one more. That would be the little Christian Fish stickers that seem to be pretty much everywhere. So common is it for me to see or experience moments of sheer terror brought on by the antics of these fish-sticker displaying drivers, that I have given them a name. I call them "Death Drivers for Jesus." Now, now, I'm not bashing Christianity. I was raised Christian and yet taught to be open-minded (making me a bit of an oxymoron ... though many would just settle for the latter two syllables). But as anyone who pays attention can attest, drivers with the fishy stickers on their cars seem hell-bent ... s'cuze me, ya'll ... Heaven-bent [bless 'em] on making sure you meet their savior just as soon as possible. I swear, it seems like every time someone pulls out right in front of me, or changes lanes into my lane while right beside me, or commits some other grievously inconsiderate and down right dangerous maneuver, there, shining from their trunk lid is one o'those fishy stickers. Sometimes I think that maybe the Lord himself stuck it there as a seal upon my lips to stem the flowing tide of obscenities that tend to spew forth when I am nearly rendered crippled or dead in an auto accident due to some other idiot's actions.

Other times I wonder if they are placed on the vehicles not to indicate a desire to get me dead and rendered up to Holy Judgment, but rather, perhaps as a plea for me to assist them on their journey meet their maker. Somehow, though, I don't think any judge, Southern though they may be, will accept, "Y'honor, the deceased was askin' for it! He had on display one o'them Jesus fishes. It was on the tailgate of his SUV, just a'beggin' me to please arrange a meetin' with the then-not-deceased Death Driver for Jesus and his maker. I could only make good on his request, y'see. Any other response would-a been rude!" Nope, that just wouldn't fly. Too bad, too. I can't tell you how many times I've nearly been sent to the great Gun Show In The Sky by someone with a little fishy sticker displayed on his or her vehicle.

Apparently I am not alone in this feeling. I recently discovered a web comic that expressed, after a fashion, my sentiments. Well, to call this bit of digitally delivered graphic pleasure a "web comic" is to call Star Wars (New Hope & Han shot first, dammit!) simply "a movie." Or to refer to the great black and white Bogart classic, Cross the Pacific as simply, "a late-night flick with that lispy actor." Nay, t'would be as though one called the great works of Shakespeare, the disk-shaped world of Terry Pratchett, or indeed anything by Jack Higgins mearly "some stories." This comic writer is genius (and now maybe he won't get mad at me for directly linking to his comic without asking him first [knock-on-wood]). ;) Anyway, here's a link to the episode to which I am referring: http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp06212005.shtml Read it, then go and check out the comic from the beginning so you'll know the characters better.

Now, I gotta go try to find that more involved piece I wrote about my fellow drivers and those with fishy decals. I think it's at work where I drafted it one evening after a close-call with one o'those Death Drivers for Jesus. When/if I find it, I'll toss it up here. 'Till then, I'm outta here!