It's that time of year -- commuting home in the dark, when the Movies start playing. Most SUVs and minivans seem to have televisions these days, and driving along beside one, it's hard to tell whether the driver or a backseat passenger is the audience. In fact, it's hard to see that there's anything in those cars at all, living. Just the blue ghost near the ceiling, vague forms drifting across it, silent, a square of illness in the quiet dark of the highway.
Unfortunately humans are programmed to look at points of light in the dark, and I find that invariably my foot strays from the gas as I pull up to pass one of these large dark shapes with its sweet sweet teevee center. What are they watching? I wonder. And I ease my little car a tad closer, craning my neck. Is that I Love Lucy? And then I slowly sidle over to the passenger seat and pop the door, then step out. I'm sure I can see what's playing if I can just get a little closer.
Then, I die.
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5 comments:
Bill, you've almost made it.
One more day. Don't give in to the shining box in the car next to you. It holds only peril for you.
Stay true to the quest. Don't put the ring on...
Those things are the devil and I will never have one in my car. And I hope to god that my child never gets in someone else's car who had one because I will never hear the end of it.
Excellent ending (not that I want you to die, it's just unexpected & harsh yet funny).
I'm with magpie - there will be no television or movie viewing in our car. This is where I get all old school parent on my kids about what we did to occupy ourselves creatively in the car...
Someone in Schenectady got arrested a couple years ago for watching an adult movie in their car's DVD player. Keep your eyes on the road if you come across I Love Lucy's . . .
Not to seem hypocritical--we DO have a wee portable DVD player that gets some play on the longest drives. But it doesn't LIVE in the car and descend from the ceiling like the Orwellian Eye of Doom. And it doesn't play porn.
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