P.M. PMS Example

Last night, I was one of the whiney commuters who cursed buses while feeling sorry for the people waiting for them in the cold.

It took me two hours to make a trip that can take 15 mintues. Each block took 15 minutes, in part due to buses, yes, and delivery trucks, yes, and vans and American boaty cars spinning wheels and blocking lanes on slight inclines, yes.

There is another factor.

I didn't mind at all cursing people like this fine driver of a fancy pick-up truck, who, like many other drivers downtown in the gridlock-snow wonderland just know that "natural disaster" means nothing less than anarchy, that signal lights don't matter because, whoops, maybe their cars won't stop without sliding or maybe they're afraid their cars won't go again if momentum is lost, so sure, it's totally acceptable to turn in front of other cars patiently waiting at the same damn light like I had been waiting patiently at every damned light for seven, 10, 15 light cycles, which are very short, by the way, and never fail to piss me off any time I'm traveling there (way to go, "vibrant downtown Kansas City"), and will wait again one, two or maybe even three more times after they got in my way.

Sigh. Things like this don't bring us closer together, it brings out our looting tendencies.

Driver's education did not include a section on snow driving other than to explain how to get out of the common, oh-so-very common, fishtail.

Anyway, no one honked at anyone, which is weird, compared to what is normal in other cities.

Maybe the snow does soften some hearts.

Yeah, well:

SOME say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

(Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice," Harper's Magazine, December 1920)