Traffic

I hate traffic with a passion. Especially Atlanta traffic which I am no longer used to. For the past five years I lived in a small town called Oxford, Mississippi and in Oxford you could get anywhere in about five minutes. Having moved back the suburbs north of Atlanta, it now takes me thirty minutes just to get to the grocery store down the street. Every morning I sprint for the door wanting to move back to Oxford, some mornings even packing a bag. Sure, I don’t have a residence there anymore but I could always sleep on a couch at the ATO house for a few nights I tell myself (wouldn’t be the first time). Then I remember that Oxford doesn’t have a Krystal, a Philly Connection, a Chipotle, a Five Guys Burger, a Cracker Barrel, a Texas de Brazil, more than two hibachi resteraunts, a Slopes BBQ, and other resteraunts. So what keeps me in Atlanta at the moment is food.
There is one good thing about traffic I have found though, but only for people like me. You see, I’m what you call a people watcher. I find it to be the most entertaining thing on earth to watch people, I just sit in the mall sometimes and watch people and the dumb things they do. Another great place for this is the supermarket which I will adress in a later blog. My new place though, is the Interstate! Who knew? Sitting in traffic the other day not moving an inch, I started to look around. There are your businessmen talking on their phones, moms screaming at the kid in backseat, the kid in the backseat screaming right back at her. There are the girls in their mid-twenties putting on their make up, sometimes smiling and winking at the mirror as if to say “oh yea..I look great today”. If they could hear through their windows I might lean over and say, “excuse me miss, but I think you missed a spot”. There are the teenage girls listening to Taylor Swift and Kenny Chesney texting their friend about the hot seventeen year old guy they got to second base with the night before. In traffic people pick their noses, read books, do crosswords, and some guys even carry drumsticks and play on their steering wheels. My favorite type of person to watch in traffic though is someone just like me, someone who jams out…. hard. I love to look over and see a lady singing as loud as she can, dancing, really getting into it. It has to be a great song for this to happen and I encourage others to try it. A great song can take you out of the terrible mood traffic puts you in and make you sing and dance. If a song can do this, it has truly made it.
There is one song that is truly what I call a “mood changer”, no matter what has happened in your day… a break up, a stock market crash or even losing your job, if you listen to this song by the end of it you will be in a great mood. Its called “C’mon Ride It” by the Quad City DJ’s. You have all heard it don’t lie…. and secretly you all love it just as much as I do. From “C’mon ride this train… hey ride it ..WHOO WHOO!!” to… “Way deep down south yo we play this game it’s the Quad City DJ’s and yo we call it the train…so if ya wanna ride this thing then c’mon down”…etc… I gurantee if you listen to this in your car today, your ride home will be much more fun. Everyone needs this on their IPOD. Another song that comes almost as close to “mood changing status” is “Shiny Happy People” by REM.. It’s just a happy song and if your still upset after these two, you really need to seek professional help.
We can’t beat the traffic here in Atlanta so we might as well do the best we can to enjoy it, so whether it’s jamming out, playing the drums on your steering wheel, slinging that air guitar, eating an entire pack of twizzlers, or yelling at the talk radio host . Do whatever it is that will get you by and won’t cause a wreck. No need to create more traffic for the rest of us.

Oh yea.... a quick hello to the ridiculously good looking nurse at the clinic…hope your day is going well..stay away from people with West Nile and Swine Flu if you can.