This is totally inappropriate for a white woman from the valley to post.  Heck, it is inappropriate for anyone to post, except I guess for the guy who posted it on YouTube because it’s his.  Thank you to my dear friend Janeen for sharing it with me…you have a special way of making me feel that I am not alone in this world. Now we just need one of these for those who refuse to stop texting and talking on the phone while they are driving.  So scoot the kids out of the room BEFORE you click to see what I am talking about.

Questions I need answered:

1.  Who is Kevin?  Is he talking to himself?

2.  What kind of car has a yellow dash?

3.  And why, oh why, do I still not have an iPhone?

Click Here:  TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE ROAD RAGE VIDEO – GET THE KIDS OUT OF THE ROOM AND DON’T WATCH IF PROFANITY AND VIOLENCE OFFEND YOU (of course the violence can’t compare with Saturday morning cartoons, so if profanity offends you, don’t watch it).

Trying to see another’s point of view can be difficult. Help me out here. Imagine that you are a county sheriff. It’s late one evening and instead of seeking out the drug dealers, drunk drivers, burglars, assailants, etc., that are tormenting our neighborhoods, you come upon a barricaded library parking lot full of mini vans and SUVs. “Wow, this is barricaded and there are no parking signs,” you say to yourself. At this point, do you:

A) Wonder why all these cars are on the inside of the barricades?
B) Check the dashboards of the cars for permits?
C) Call your department to see if the city had filed for special permissions? or
D) Call tow trucks to come and start towing the cars away, without doing any investigation as to why they are there.

If you are Sheriff Kerry (not his real name for obvious reasons), you chose option D. By the time the owners of the vehicles innocently wandered back to their cars after a glorious children’s’ musical review at the community center, which shares the lot with the library, option D had been exercised. Six cars had been towed, and Sheriff Kerry stood watching as the seventh, another minivan, was being prepped to be towed.

He was neither apologetic nor accommodating. He admitted that, no, he did not check the dashboards. No, he did not call his department to see if the city had arranged for special permissions. And no, it did not occur to him to wonder why this barricaded lot was full. “There were paper signs on the walls, saying No Parking. There were barricades.” That was enough for him. So he stood there, by his car, for the better part of an hour, watching as one tow truck after another came, loaded, and left.

Obviously, we parents were upset. We all had permits on our cars. Our kids were upset – how were we going to get to the cast pizza party? Do you think that Sheriff Kerry cared? No. Do you think he could have admitted his error, apologized and worked with us to resolve the situation quickly? Yes, but did he? No. Instead, he:

A) Said, “There are signs posted, so I towed,” over and over again.
B) Told the moms and children to step back.
C) Called for additional back-up patrol cars when we thought he was actually calling his department to cancel the tow trucks.
D) All of the above.

D. All of the above. Seriously, more than one patrol car showed up almost instantaneously after he called. The ludicrousness of the whole situation was getting worse. And it seemed to be going down hill faster than we could cry, “Help!” But who was to come to our aid, to help us? Those that our tax dollars pay to serve and protect us were the ones creating the havoc.

In the past three weeks, in my neighborhood alone, there have been two car jackings – one where the attackers beat the woman, a daylight burglary where they tied up the housekeeper and robbed the house, an assault on an elderly woman in the bushes on her street, and evidently, a drug hot spot identified and now under surveillance. Why weren’t there patrol cars out protecting these citizens?

Budget cuts? There did not seem to be any shortage of patrol cars on demand that evening in the library parking lot full of moms and kids. The budget cuts that are decimating our public schools, closing our fire departments, and threatening our parks do not seem to be affecting this department. Or maybe they focus on parking lots because they are now working on tow commissions? I guess we are all left to imagine what we will.

As the evening unfolded, we encountered another member of the sheriff’s department. Thank god, because he renewed our faith in our city employees. Sheriff Manny (again, not his real name) had just completed a drug bust around the block from where my car was being held hostage. He helped facilitate the release of my car by verifying the miscommunication that Sheriff Kerry refused to admit to. Perhaps it was because we had to drive 20 minutes to another city entirely to fetch my car, or perhaps because this sheriff usually deals with parolees and real bad guys, either way, the vast difference between the two was astounding.

Even more astounding was that we were one of six families that spent an hour and a half dealing with Sheriff Kerry (and his back-ups); driving to the tow impound – dealing with their dispatch and driver (even the  owner showed up); on the phone with the sheriff’s department trying to clear this mess up; and finally, in my case, having yet another sheriff dispatched to facilitate the resolution. What was the total bill – times 6 – for that wasteful use of all of our time, and how can our budget possibly fund it? I have no idea, but I can’t help but wonder, what needs to be added to the budget and to the conversation – rather than cut from it – to fix what appears to be a wasteful and broken city system.

Running out the door to get to an important meeting, I got into my car and, because the universe tends to put ‘interesting times’ in our paths at the most inopportune times, my car would not start. Completely dead. I sat for a moment in disbelief. I glanced quickly at my watch. I had allotted the exact amount of time needed to get to the meeting. No buffer for anything to go wrong. As my life is currently a fine balancing act on a very tight rope, being thrown off feels like a cruel test. I could feel the upset coming on. Eyes tearing. Irritation and anger boiling up. I let myself have a brief moment, and then forced these totally useless reactions to pass. I took a deep breath and started thinking. I called those I was meeting with to let them know I was going to be half an hour late, but that I would be there. “Are you sure you can make it?” “Yes,” I said with false confidence. It was very important to me that I make it – not making it was not an option. Next came the plan of attack, “Who should I call for help?”

While this may seem like a harmless and easy question for most people, I am at that precarious point in my life where I wasn’t quite sure who to call first. AAA was out of the question, as I have not signed up for my own membership since the family plan lapsed after the divorce – a membership, by the way, that I never needed in 15 years (of course). I had to call someone who would be willing to drop everything, rush to my side and either let me have their car for the next several hours, or drive me and hang out until my meeting was over. Which made the list very short. Should I call my ex-husband? Or should I call my boyfriend? Or should I call one of a few girlfriends? It was an odd feeling, weighing in on each option and what I should do. I felt like, out of respect for my girlfriends, I absolutely should try the ex and the boyfriend first, as in my head, they should be the first ones to come to my rescue. Again with the ‘shoulds’, and the implied expectations.

I have a wonderful relationship with Keith, my ex-husband, and I know that if he could, he would drop everything to help me. If he could. But we are no longer married and it just feels odd sometimes to call him with my problems, especially since there is another man in my life now, my boyfriend, Michael. In my mind, it came down to a matter of relationship hierarchy that he should indeed be the first one called. But I was nervous that I would not get the response I needed. Or desired. I don’t do damsel in distress well and I did not want to be disappointed. But it was the appropriate first call – for the ‘appropriate’ standards I have set in my mind. Add in my growing sense of panic and this was a truly precarious situation.

Michael answered on the second call. The first went to voicemail. I explained the situation quickly then did not say much more. For some strange reason I did not want to ask (this would not have been the case with Keith or a girlfriend). I wanted him to offer to drop everything and come and help me – again, the distressed damsel thing. After he ran down a few options he did indeed come to it on his own. He offered to pack up his two girls and head to my house so that I could take his car to the meeting. At this point, I had 40 minutes to make it on time (the new late time). It was 15 minutes from his house to mine and 20 minutes from my house to walking into my meeting. Arghh. Not a lot of cushion. I sat calmly waiting (it’s a new skill), while my son Kendall occasionally lifted his head away from his laptop to remark on the situation. “Of course, your car had to die today,” he said. Then, “This really sucks for you.” Then, “How long do you think it will take the girls to get ready to get into his car?” Then, “How much time do you have left?” The support was overwhelming. But Michael was there, quickly, at my door, girls in tow, handing me his keys.

The rush of gratitude I felt in that moment was not just about him rescuing me. It was that he could. That for some reason I thought he should. And that he did. It was also that I was not disappointed. That I could count on him in a personal moment of crisis, like I knew I could with my ex-husband, like I knew I could with select girlfriends. And that felt good. Like it should.

“So, do I need to pack anything for the kids?” a friend asked after I agreed to take her kids to the beach one day.

“Just some gas money,” I replied. She laughed out loud. I didn’t. “I’m serious,” I countered playfully, not wanting to seem rude, but needing her to get that I was not joking about it. She laughed again, kissed her kids and left.

This was not the first time I had taken her kids for an entire day. And I knew it would not be the last. As I work from home, I try to schedule time off to explore our city and all it has to offer with my kids. And because she can’t, on occasion, I take her kids. Truly, she is a lovely lady, but even my own sister and I make sure that we have trued-up on cash, expenses, etc., when we have each other’s kids for an extended amount of time. It’s never a big deal and is often met with “Don’t worry about it.” It is, however, an important sign of acknowledgment and awareness.

Now, with budgetary constraints and gas prices rising again, I am feeling the pinch around my fuel bills. From my house in the Valley to Zuma Beach is approximately 18.3 miles. To the Santa Barbara Zoo it is 65.7 miles. To Burbank: 15.4 miles. To Magic Mountain: 19.6 miles. To San Clemente: 84.3 miles. At today’s average gas price of $3.05 (for the cheap stuff) a gallon and a minivan that gets approximately 15 miles to the gallon (I know it’s not much, but it is what it is), those trips add up to 406.6 miles or 27.11 gallons of gas – which is $82.68 total round trip. For some perspective, that is the cost of my monthly phone bill and cable bill, both absolute necessities, combined.

I get where my friend is coming from. I have never (until now) added up how much it was going to cost me to drive anywhere before, much less ever asked her to cover gas expenses because her kids were coming along before. But with the economy in the state it’s in, with my budget for extracurricular activities in the pinch it’s in, and gas becoming more expensive (last year it hit $4.35 a gallon, which would make the cost of those trips $117.92), I think it’s only fair that the cost is shared, since I am invariably the one who does the driving.

As a competitive athlete growing up, there was a group of parents that took turns driving the kids to all the weekend meets throughout Southern California. Back then, regardless of the fact that the duties were shared, everyone’s parents gave us kids money for food and snacks and a specific amount of money for us to hand to the driver. Gas money. I don’t remember how much gas was at the time, but I do remember that it was significant enough that my parents bought themselves a diesel Peugeot to save on the cost of fuel. I took my driver’s license test in that car and years later, it was the car they could not sell or even give away. Diesel had failed. Gas lived on.

What will become of our situation today? A hybrid getting 45 miles to the gallon would almost save me enough money on a monthly basis to afford another car payment. But I am waiting it out. I am hanging on to my car because it is paid for, because it seats seven, and because the last saving grace to the fuel crisis of the 80’s turned out to be a burden to some.

So I will once again revive “Gas Money.” If asking nicely doesn’t work, perhaps I should just hand over an invoice? I’m not a petty or cheap person (quite the opposite really), but who else is going to look out for my interests but me? And truthfully, by not being aware and acknowledging the circumstances and offering to cover costs, who is being petty? Or cheap?

Paris, Sophie and I were enjoying the baby turtles and giant fish in a nearby pond when the roar of cars from the street interrupted our serene exploration. All of a sudden a never-ending line of Lamborghinis came barreling through the closest intersection. It was, at first, magnificent. These amazingly expensive and powerful cars in candy-coated colors were close enough to feel. The roar reverberated in our bellies and the colors sparkled in the morning sun.

An occasional red light brought the procession to a stop just long enough for us each to pick our favorite color – as though we were browsing at a dime store candy counter. My favorite was the glistening purple one. Paris chose royal blue and more…