BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

I have a really good idea on how to make the world a better place: pass a law that car horns can only do a little short beep like the beep some cars do when they get locked. The only meaning of the long “BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!” is to say to another driver, “You’re a fucking idiot!” To which the response is almost invariably “BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! No, YOU’RE the idiot!”

Which does not seem to serve any purpose other than to wake babies and rattle everyone else on the road. I mean really: if you’ve got enough time and a free hand to go “BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!,” you must not actually be in danger, am I wrong? And if you’re not in danger, what’s the big deal?

This probably makes everyone suspicious that I am getting more than my fair share of the “BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!,” which I don’t think I am, although how would I really know, since whenever I’m in the car I’m almost always the one driving, and the amount of “BWAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!” I get seems normal to me. (I will add that in over twenty years of driving, I have never even ONCE had a moving violation.) (I admit I have violated a few posts and parked cars. Not recently, though. Don’t blame me for that scratch.) (My Scion started out quite square; four years of street parking has whittled it into something more ovoid.)

Now, something about running. I keep forgetting to mention this:

YOU CANNOT PREDICT WHETHER A RUN WILL BE GOOD OR BAD.

Which is one of the reasons that you have to go no matter what.

Example: last week, after a hellish few days of:

• HB vomiting in the bed
• TH not vomiting, but lying around trying to look pitiful
• broken washer
• broken dryer (still not fixed)
• multiple graduation-related events at night

and god knows what-all, I had no choice but to take HB with me in the dreaded running stroller if I wanted to get a run in.

First I had to lug the stroller up the basement stairs. Then I had to inflate the tires (with “help” from HB). Then I had to assemble the thing. Then I had to put all sorts of snacks in the pocket. Then I had to get dressed to run. Then … sudden torrential downpour wipes out the blue skies! So I’m like, maybe we shouldn’t go—by the time the rain lets up I’ll be too hungry, HB will be hellish on the ride, my shoulder hurts and I don’t want to push the stroller, etc. etc., whine, whine … but then I smacked myself in the face and off we went, once the rain let up enough to be able to see farther than 10 feet ahead of us.

And HB was an absolute ANGEL. A few quotes from him: “No, you don’t have to put the cover up, I like the rain—I’ll let you know if I need it!” At the 1.5 mile mark, as I turned the stroller around, not wanting to push my luck: “What are you doing? Let’s keep going!” On the way home, “Oh! Look at the rainbow!” “Listen to the birds!” “The flowers have all the colors of the rainbow!”

I was a little suspicious that he’d found a tablet of E on the ground somewhere, à la Jude Law’s child (suuuuure, it wasn’t theirs! They just somehow got a really good look at it before she popped it in her mouth! But weren’t quick enough to stop her!). But the only thing he has ever found on the ground and put in his mouth is a cigarette.

It works the other way too. Some days the weather is gorgeous, you have all the time in the world, you’ve eaten just enough but not too much, your ipod is charged, you’re wearing your cute new shorts, and—somehow it sucks. But: it’s kind of like sex or pizza for guys: even if it’s bad, it’s still a run, and a run is better than no run.