As some of you have surmised by now, I live in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of the U.S. Army War College, Dickinson College, and places where it can be proven George Washington slept. It’s a nice, small town in the middle of farmland and an all-around decent place to live.
Carlisle is also famous for car shows, and during the summer, there’s one roughly every other weekend. They do bring a lot of money into the borough and surrounding areas, but they also bring a lot of hassles.
First of all, the traffic. Carlisle is the county seat, so there’s already some problem with rush hour traffic twice a day. However, on show weekends, it can be nigh well impossible to negotiate the streets for the cars and trailers with cars. This seems to be concentrated in the area of the fairground, but therein lies the rub. We live near the fairground, and the streets near the fairground are how we get from place to place. Listening to the car junkies revving their engines, operating the hydraulics on their low-rider trucks, and having to wait forty-five minutes to go about three miles is a headache-inducing experience, let me tell you.
Second, some of these people are, well, less than savory. I don’t mean to impugn their hygiene (although some of them could stand to take a bath) but their behavior could use some improvement. Not long ago, during the aforementioned low-rider truck show, some idiot decided that it would be acceptable to make a few remarks about my sex appeal for the amusement of his friends. I knew this was the case at the time, and it didn’t bother me, but at the same time, those remarks are the hallmark of an ill-bred and ill-mannered person.
Third, their manners are rather, well, lacking. The aforementioned idiot is Exhibit A. I’ve been cut off in traffic, almost run over, cut off in line at local restaurants, seen these people litter the streets with their trash. I’ve also had to wait fifteen minutes to be able to turn out of a parking lot because none of these people would let me out. The three seconds it would’ve taken them to let me in were three seconds away from their precious car show.
Basically, my complaint to them is this:
When you’re visiting someone else’s home, please show some fucking manners! We live here, you don’t. Please don’t throw your shit onto our streets, it costs us money to clean up after you. Please don’t be assholes and refuse to let people into traffic. Please don’t be assholes in general and obey the rules of the road as you were taught in driver’s ed class. This means that cutting people off is rude. Please keep your postadolescent male yap shut while you’re at it. No, I don’t want to get in your car and have sex with you. No, I don’t care if you think I’m Moby Dick’s twin sister.
Christ, when did common courtesy die?
Robin
