SHARKWATER

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Driving On the Other Side

Very, very amusing piece by Jon Carroll in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle. Laugh-out-loud funny stuff, particularly if read aloud. Among other things, it contains sheep, tussocks, quadriceps, stairs, and cars. All quite funny.

As my antipodean readers have experienced first-hand, I have actually driven on the unaccustomed side of the road (we all survived). The main difficulties I had were lane positioning (which had to do with the driving position and point-of-view, not so much the side of the road) and turning on the windshield wipers when I wanted to signal a turn ("Couldn't you tell I was going to turn? Why else would the wipers be swishing on a sunny day?"). Also good for a chuckle, but Jon's column is much funnier.

For what it's worth, Jon is a distant acquaintance. We've met several times at events, and he occasionally sits in front of me at baseball games when he attends with my seat neighbors. So read the story already. It's funny!

3 comments:

Laura E. Goodin said...

I've had issues with left-right clarity all my life, so switching isn't really much of a problem &151; except for those damned turn signals and wipers!

Laura E. Goodin said...

TYPO -- rats! &151; should have been —.

Houston Dunleavy said...

We refer to such things in our house as "hemisphere burps". They usually aren't fatal, but you know it's a problem when even *I* get confused on coming back to Oz and head to the wrong side of the car!