By Jim Hagarty
You can go ahead and ban the use of cellphones by the drivers of motor vehicles if you like. You’ll get no argument from me.
However, when it comes to this issue, it may be that there are also other driver distractions that need to be tackled.
I’ll admit I’ve spoken on my “cell” while speeding along down the highway, but I’ve never once, when doing so, had a sudden urge to hurl myself out the driver’s door into the path of other vehicles. And yet, that’s what I almost did the day my baseball cap started to move on its own on top of my head while I was guiding my old bucket of bolts in and out of downtown traffic. This was very unnerving because when I first became aware of this unexpected super-cranial activity taking place under my cap, I didn’t know if it was a hamster, a hummingbird or a hermit crab that was causing all this commotion. It’s hard to drive carefully when the member of some other species is rollerskating across the patch of skin holding in your frontal lobe. A frantic struggle ensued as cap was hoisted and search begun for the head-dancing hitchhiker. Before long, an earwig showed up, but not before my car did a few weird tricks on the road and scared the life and other things out of a couple of pedestrians.
The one irony is that, hair-challenged as I am, I had always vowed never to sport a wig on my head, not knowing that one day a wig of the ear variety would take up temporary residence up there. (NEWS BULLETIN: The Worst Pun Of The Year Award Committee has named a winner.)
And while the bylaw restricting the presence of tapdancing earwigs on drivers is being prepared, perhaps we need to go all the way and ban the bumblebee and the mosquito from the inside of cars and trucks too.
Back in my cigarette smoking days, a lit one, from time to time, would tumble from my lips and fall between my legs, disappearing under my backside as I was driving down the road. This too used to result in my doing a fairly agitated version of the Highland fling while trying to keep my rear end from being scorched. Parked in a driveway, this might not have seemed so serious; roaring down the road was always a poor time to pick to do a modern-day re-staging of the cow jumping over the moon. Or the moon jumping over the … (ah, forget it!).
The authorities are getting some statistics together, now, on the numbers of accidents being caused by drivers on cellphones. But my guess is we have no idea how many are brought about by people with critters in their caps, butts under their bums (huh?) or overturned bags of french fries at their feet.
A hermetically sealed driver’s cabin or special suit patterned after an astronaut’s gear are our only rational solutions to this considerable problem.
No Phone! No Food! No Fun!
Let that be our new safety motto.
And may I add a fourth:
No Fanny Furnaces!
And a fifth:
No Furtive Follicle Freeloaders!
