Putting the Fun Back in Complaining

As there is nothing I can do to end the tyranny of the toll road, it'll have to suffice to complain about it. I'll start with the tagline of this particular toll road, which is "Putting the fun back in driving."

When and for whom, oh Mister Toll Man, did driving lose all its fun, except when there was a toll to pay? Now i'll tell you about the office I had to drive to with the desperate wish of avoiding the multiple hundreds of dollars I owed in evading their "fun toll road" like a first rate ignoramus.

Upon finally reaching this office, after some brief and paltry anxiety sessions at being unable to find its conveniently obscure location, I noticed the flags waving out front like a beacon of freedom and hope. For some reason, the words "toll road" and "freedom and hope" confront each other with some discord. There stood an American flag. A California flag. And in the middle, as though reigning over the masses, stood a white flag with the company's title printed purely upon it, mocking me completely with its relentless waving. "You're here because you must beg. You're here because you're an idiot" the flag told me. I gathered my limited courage and made my way inside the briskly aired building, a wave of it greeting me as I threw open the door.

Once inside the cramped apartment devoted to customer relations, my eye targeted a framed, enlarged photo of a customer service representative looking at the camera with a fake smile and - brace yourself - a thumb's up. I wondered at the direction of this photo shoot, and the kind of life its director led. I wondered at the designer of this office, and what struck him to believe that photo would bring anyone glee. I sat down in the only available station, with the only woman in the building, who dared my patience by sporting chippy pink nail polish. As I said in an entry from last year, "if there is one thing I hate worse than a screaming baby, it's chippy pink nail polish. Not only is it pink, it's chippy." Her chippy pink nailed hands typed away at her computer, the deciding factor in my punishment for driving. All the while I stared at the glass bowl of candies, imagining myself unwrapping one and consuming it. My mad laugh probably frightened this woman. I imagined her going home that night, telling her husband about the psychotic girl she dealt with today as she made a box of mac 'n cheese for her 4 year old son, who would probably never evade a toll road.

The moral of this entry is this: do not listen to me when I'm angry about things that can't be helped. Soon enough we'll be forced to pay to walk outside. We'll be forced to pay to pee, like in 'Urinetown'. We'll be forced to pay to say hello to our mothers.

It all started with toll roads, folks.