This week I was taking a cab and the cabbie confirmed for me that DC drivers were terrible!! I was like, "Bad weather we're having," and he replied, "Yeah. It makes the drivers even worse since they're not used to snow!" I pressed him on it and asked if it's true that DC drivers are the worst in the world. He said, "Oh yeah, they don't know what they're doing." I'll take that as testimony from an expert witness, since he was both a professional driver and also from abroad.

Speaking of the snow, what kind of town is this that it shuts down because of a little precipitation? I lived in Michigan for half my life and the only times we were excused from school were when the ice literally froze around our legs so we couldn't walk. When I lived in NYC the town closed down only two times: the day a category 2 hurricane hit us, and the day after 9/11. And even then the pizza places, movie theaters, and bars stayed open. DC gets a few flaks and every place draws the blinds. You'd think a feared gunslinger had just pranced into town to exact revenge.

Snow here is like a mouse running through a kitchen. The city is the 1950s housewife, jumping up on a chair and batting at the mouse pointlessly with a broom. In this case the broom is the four or five salt trucks the city has at its disposal, dumping an Atlantic Ocean's worth of salt onto the road right outside my apartment; since the government doesn't know how to plow the snow, they figure salt will draw deer out from the woods into the street where, with the power of their tongues, they will slowly lick the snow away. Way to put those deer to work!

Next year the plan is to pour alcohol, cigarettes, and dignity onto the street so the city's 5,000+ homeless population can replace the deer.

Labels: bad drivers, cabbie, cars, DC, deer, homeless, housewife, snow