Curiosity Kills!
Living here on the ‘Island You Can Drive To’, most of us only drive to the House You Live In. Kind of understandable, considering there’s no outlet malls or fast food franchises beyond our mailbox. Further on, there’s just more blacktop, identical mailboxes and, well, more of the same. Which I guess explains why most of our northern neighbors have essentially no idea whatsoever of what lies beyond their driveways to the south. You might think that commute to Stanwoodopolis and beyond would grow tiresome. You might think idle curiosity would kick in after the 1000th commute to I-5. What the hell IS down at the end of their island? Where do those other roads GO??
But no! We are creatures of habit, apparently. Whatever pioneer spirit led us to the end of America, we’re no Lewis and no Clark either. We’re like the Conestoga family headed west that took one glimpse of the fierce gauntlet of the upcoming Rockies and decided Kansas was plenty far enough. Better to take the easy way out than risk it for the improbability of a promised Paradise the brochures probably exaggerated.
A few years back we had some serious construction on the mainline down the gut of the island. Months of detours that forced the complacent shortest-distance-between-two-points-is-a-straight-line crowd to shunt over to the picturesque and historic west side. Believe me, to listen to the outraged outcry or read the vitriol in the letters to the editor, you’d have thought we’d routed them through the alleys of Hell or the horrors of Smokey Point. They wanted a detour on a blacktop nearby that was definitely not designed for heavy traffic and they wanted it NOW. Our commissioner, Bill Thorn, god bless his decisiveness, said no, it’s a temporary inconvenience and we won’t destroy a perfectly good road to make the GPS-averse electorate shut up their weeping and lamentations. Grow up, fer cryin out loud!
Next election, of course, the crybabies exacted revenge. Bye bye Bill. You can lead a horse to the South End, but he’ll thank you by kicking you half to death. Better, we’ve learned, just to tell em what they’re missing. No need to drive any further than necessary. Curiosity, after all, kills.
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