The coronavirus has caused the world to turn upside down and inside out. My travels have been interrupted; no casinos in the last two months; no trips outside the country either. My wife the Beautiful AP and I are having a sedate life at the moment—the most sedate life of our lives. Our lives now revolve around our home, our pets and Zoom calls.
Our village is quite quiet now. We are stepping back in time to an older, finer world.
Except:
There is a second virus out there; a hideous one, perhaps more hideous than even the coronavirus. It is called the carownervirus (pronounced car-owner-virus) and it entails humans removing the mufflers from their cars and speeding on New York’s highways and boulevards.
Intermittently during the mornings, the days, the evenings and the middle of the night when I get up for a refreshing urinary expulsion, I hear them zooming in the distance as they race one another. The closest parkway is about two miles away but even so that mufflerless cacophony assails my ears.
Who are these life-forms that think removing mufflers and stepping down on a gas pedal makes them special? Are they believers in the idiom I am loud, therefore I am? Are they the adult version of those beings that spent years trying to ruin the educations of all the other kids who wanted to learn something? Is it true that the young idiot usually grows into an older idiot? I do ponder these questions.
The carownervirus might be here (hear) to stay as the infected take over the roads while healthy people hunker down to avoid catching or releasing the coronavirus.
Perhaps those infected by the carownervirus will even have their own PPE uniforms to wear: short-sleeved T-shirts with a pack of unfiltered cigarette rolled up in one sleeve, adorned with gold chains dangling from their necks, along with greased hair and leather jackets bearing their gang’s name (Misfits!).
Will their saying now become for all time, “Hey, Daddy-o! What’s happening?” And when all our lives settle into a new normal, will we be challenged to a perpetual drag race each time we venture on the open road?
I know what I’ll say when I am challenged: “Sorry sir, but I have a bowl of goldfish on the front seat.”
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The un-muffler gives the effect of superior power.
Much like attaching a playing card to the frame of your Schwinn bike so that the tire spokes continually flap flap flap flapppp !
Add several playmates to the parade in front of the house.
Born to ride.
I thought I was going crazy but have heard them too late at night. We live right off of a fairly main thoroughfare
that is temptingly straight.
Can’t hear them during the day over the roar of the landscape-o-saurus though who have simply remarkable timing in revving up as soon as I sit outside and open my book.