The theme for this week in 1999 was "Exits". I'm not sure what I was aiming for with this. I think it was supposed to be sort of a Dave Barry like column rather than a true story. Again, this is not one of my better ones, or one of my favorites.
Life is full of exits. There’s exits from buildings, exits from interstates, exits from relationships, exits even from life itself. Sometimes an exit is a really good thing and leads to somewhere you really want to go. Like when you’ve been driving and drinking too much soda and you’ve just GOT to go you’re glad to see an exit with any place that might just possibly have a restroom or when you get into a relationship with somebody you really shouldn’t have and you take the first available exit.
All exits don’t lead to good places though and sometimes you don’t have a choice. You know relationships work both ways and there are two people and maybe she is looking to show you the exit. Either that or her husband plans to show both of you the exit. Sometimes if you’re not paying attention on the interstate you end up stuck going off an exit you didn’t want and that only happens when it leads to somewhere that you look around and really start to fear that if you stop your tires will be immediately removed and that you may have even found an exit on the highway of life.
What about exits that you’re not allowed to use? Don’t you hate to see an exit sign pointing to an area marked "authorized personnel only"? Does that mean you can’t leave until you suck up enough to get authorized? Or when an exit has the little thingy that says open only in case of emergency, alarm will sound. You DO know what’d behind those don’t you? A fire exit you say? HAH the way it works is they KNOW somebody will have to try it. You open the door to sneak out the exit without paying figuring even with the alarm you can run away before they catch you. Well what you find is a puddle outside the door. You are committed now the alarm is going off, people are watching you. You gingerly step through the puddle and SPLAT find out that its 6 feet deep and filled with run off from the parking lot, water mixed with oil and antifreeze. Your clothes are ruined, you’re a laughing stock and you STILL have to pay.
Most exits have signs. "I-10 1 mile ahead", or "Emergency Exit Only". Life should maybe have those signs and people would maybe not take some exits they didn’t mean to really. Signs like "Smoking Exit 20 years ahead" or "Eat that and exit those pants next week" or maybe "Ignore wife Divorce 10 months ahead".
But then we’ve all driven the nations interstates so we know how well people read signs don’t we? When’s the last time you were driving down the road and saw some idiot swerve across from the left lane across 4 lanes of traffic to make an exit just in time? And what do we do when we see that? We talk about what an idiot he is and ask doesn’t he ever read signs and….oh crap! Thats my exit! I can make it all the way across if I jerk the wheel hard. Why don’t they put up better signs? Now what was I saying about that idiot back there?
And even this story has an exit although its called..
The end.
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