Please Don’t Ask Me To Pick You Up At The Airport. Ever.

There’s a scene in the movie L.A. Story when Steve Martin gets in his car and drives to the house next door. Next door. No one walks in Los Angeles. People will circle a parking lot for seven minutes looking for a spot right in front of a supermarket as if all our walkable concrete is paved with crocodiles.

We are a city that hates if you ask us to pick you up at the airport. There are 8 million people in Los Angeles and 7.9 million of us are at LAX circling for hours, waiting for your plane to land and writing suicide notes.

If we were paid commensurate with the time spent on freeways most Californians would be millionaires. To add insult to injury it takes forever to get to a car crash that has backlogged traffic to almost where you began your journey. Two hours to go one and a half miles and when you get there, what do you see? Nothing. If it takes me two hours to go one and a half miles, I want to see a head suspended in mid‑air. Show me a pancreas flopping on the asphalt.

To pass the time I listen to books on tape. I once got a dirty one and had to pull over and get a motel which was embarrassing because I was alone.

My first car was so old it had a dome light on the ceiling, which was conveniently located behind me, apparently designed by Cirque de Soleil. And that blinding light, what’s in there, a 9-watt bulb? Why didn’t the car just come equipped with candles? Regulating the car heater was a task best left to the engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It only had two temperature settings, flame broiled and microwave. You’re either hot or you’ve exploded. I could never get it right. I turned it on and five minutes later would think, “Gee, I must be in the wrong lane because we’re orbiting the sun.”

Don’t ever make the mistake of going food shopping and then putting all your groceries on the floor if you have the heat coming out of the floor vents. By the time I get home, I cooked an entire roast beef medium‑rare. Twenty more minutes and the baked potatoes would have been done. If you’re driving long distance, you can use the car as a crock-pot.

My boyfriend and I took a trip to Palm Springs, which is in the desert. I fell asleep for twenty minutes. When I awoke, there was snow everywhere.

“Where are we?”

“I think we’re almost in Palm Springs.”

“Well, why don’t we pull over here and ask these Canadian Mounties exactly where we are?”

When he’s driving it’s always, “We’ll take a right at the light then turn left at the exit.” When I’m driving it’s “Get in the southbound lane and go west at the next roundabout.” Like I’m Davy Crockett and there’s a sundial in the car.

Moses wandered in the desert with the Jews for forty years. I’m guessing that was supposed to be a ten-day trip. Moses’ wife probably spent the whole time saying, “Moses, don’t be a schmuck, stop and ask Achmed where we are.” I’m still amazed that forty years ago NASA sent men to the moon with a car. Probably to prove that they couldn’t ask for directions on two planets.

The proof? It’s still up there.

[If you don’t click on the little green heart at the bottom I assume it’s because I owe you money.]

I’m running out of Ramen! paypal.me/SuzySoro