So I got to spend some time yesterday in the comedy of errors you might be reading about in the morning paper today.
I was headed over to Winter Haven on Thursday, via Bartow Road to Winter Lake Road (important detail: pay attention). And as I headed over there, a humungous thunderstorm headed over here.
By the time I was near the Parkway, the storm had done it’s damage. 15 power lines just south of Winter Lake Road had been snapped in half and were laying across the southbound lanes.
We didn’t know any of that, of course. All we could see is the dead traffic light. And the world’s most entertaining traffic cop.
I had to sneak past the Parkway off-ramp, which was filled with all kinds of impatient hooligans, but eventually I was able to use the shoulder to weasal my way up to the left-turn lane, where I had a front-row seat to the show.
A traffic cop was placed in the intersection. She meant to direct traffic away from the southbound lanes.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t a good traffic cop. She knew all the motions and everything. But for the people in my lanes, they took an additional level of… persuasion. Here’s how it played out.
She would motion them to the left.
They would start going straight.
She would glare, then motion them left.
They would inch forward a little bit more.
At this point, she usually started hopping up and down with frustration.
They would inch forward just a bit, like a kid trying to see how much they can get away with.
For the hard cases, she would run alongside them yelling at the top of her lungs, begging, pleading for them to turn left.
So they turned left.
Mild applause would follow from the audience, and then the process repeated itself.
Just when everybody was catching on, the light suddenly came back on, and a whole new level of confusion was added to it.
The cop couldn’t see it because she was perched right beneath the light, but everyone else could.
So she couldn’t figure out why people weren’t following her instructions, and everybody else couldn’t figure out why there was a traffic cop directing traffic at a perfectly functional traffic light.
Anyway, it made for an entertaining 20 minutes. Next time I’m bringing popcorn.
Jots & Blots 