Hazard Lights

Living in the Bay Area has afforded me the opportunity to learn first hand many new things about driving, that I heretofore did not know, living as I did, outside the Bay Area for many years.  Most of what I have learned is surprisingly absent any mention in the California Driver’s Manual.  One of the areas about which I have become enlightened was on the use of the hazard lights. This, I believe, is unique to Northern California. In most of the rest of the country, the hazard lights or "flashers" are meant to be used to signal other drivers that you are experiencing mechanical difficulties or that an emergency exists and that you are in need of help. Here in the Bay Area, flashers are have evolved considerably from those limited purposes anticipated by automobile manufacturers and the Legislature.

For example, I now know that the hazard lights allow you stop in the middle of the road, regardless of the time of day, weather conditions or presence of any other motorists and regardless of the speed of the other cars on that road. The flasher similarly allows you to make illegal turns, particularly u-turns or turns that require that you traverse several lanes of traffic. The hazard light also allows you to park anywhere. This is one of the most delightful it its uses. The technique is simple: you turn on your flashers and park your car, quite literally, anywhere you want. The preferred use is to block access to and from parking lots, businesses and other streets. The more popular the area the better.

Another handy use for the hazard light is to simply block all lanes of traffic, especially if you are waiting to pick someone up, say from school, or from their job. There is no need to pull to right of the road or to, perhaps, park in a designated area. No. With a simple press of the hazard lights button, you can inconvenience and endanger literally hundreds of people without a care. Again, the technique is simple. Turn on your hazard lights, stop your car as far into moving traffic as you can and wait for your passenger. Oh and by the way, there is no time limit. With the flashers operating you can wait for as long as need for your passengers. Everyone else will find a way around you or wait, assuming you properly blocked all possible passage.

Finally, and one of the most novel uses of the hazard light here in Northern California, is to alter all conventional right-of-way regulations. Your flashers allow you to run stop signs and similar restrictive traffic regulating devices. With the flasher blinking, drive through these pesky traffic controlled areas at your will – all other must yield to you. In fact, you can do just about anything you want when you have your hazard lights on. It is Northern California’s do-what-ever-the-fuck-you-want-to device. After all, if the manufacturer of the car did not want you to liberally use these lights, they would not have made the switch so large and placed it so prominently on the dash board. Push the button to active your flashers and you do whatever rude, dangerous, inconceivably stupid, selfish, moronic and life-threatening move you can possibly do. And then drive home, plug in your environmentally-friendly car and really feel good about yourself.

Sidewalking

I am convinced that people tend to walk like they drive, which is to say, generally, poorly. The most noticeable characteristic of people’s walking is that they cannot seem to proceed in a straight line. They wobble or warble about as if they are drunk or suffering from vertigo. Surprisingly, this is unrelated to whether of not they are talking on their cell phones while they amble along. In fact, from my observation, this behavior is unrelated to anything external to the person walking. It might be understandable if the sidewalk presented obstacles which had to negotiated by walking in this sinuous manner. But this is not case. They just cannot walk straight down the sidewalk. Of course, if he or she were the only one using the sidewalk, this would be a who-cares situation. But on the busy streets from which I have made these observations, that is not the case.

In addition to this random back and forth movement, people do not seem to understand or even pay attention to the flow of pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk. Generally, I’ve observed, when there are more than one or two people on a given sidewalk people tend to form a pattern whereby those going one way proceed on one side of the sidewalk while those going the other way stick to the opposite side of the sidewalk. This tends to follow the rules-of-the-road generally accepted throughout the country.

Without fail there are always those few who either refuse to abide by this convention or are too stupid, inconsiderate or unobservant or some pathetic combination thereof, to conform, and attempt walk on the side coming directly at them. Such behavior is not only highly disruptive of the movement of people along the sidewalks, but ultimately results in someone or something being knocked to the ground. Unfortunately, the person getting knocked down or having their belongings knocked out of their hands is usually not the person walking against the flow. And, astoundingly, when this has happened, the fool walking against the flow gets upset with the person into whom he or she collided; as if everyone else on the street is an inconsiderate troglodyte and are supposed to avoid him.

Plain

I recently found myself craving fast food. Which is to say, I had a hankering for a hamburger, or, more specifically, a cheeseburger. I located the nearest fast food restaurant and quickly placed my order. I asked the small Korean woman behind the counter for a cheeseburger. The $6,000 worth of electronic communication equipment she had strapped to her head, which was primarily used for taking orders from the drive through windows, made it look as though I had just placed my lunch order with Mission Control in Houston.

Liking surprises as I do just not on my burger, I ordered my cheeseburger plain. I do not eat fast food with enough regularity to remember the various combinations of lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise, special sauce, pickles and onions that each chain favors. In fact, in my haste to find my fix, I didn’t even notice which fast food restaurant I was in. So, I tried to keep it simple by eliminating all but the basic burger, cheese and bun; seemed somehow safer and certainly more predictable.

Lucille," her name tag read, with a modicum of cheer, took my order and my money and replaced them with a number. I was No. 198. I briefly wondered if 197 people had actually placed orders ahead of me today - possible, but hard to imagine as it was only 11:00 am? No matter, the small bag containing my lunch was ready in an instant. I sat down at the nearest reasonably clean table and began to unpack the desire of my graving. Once the wrapper was off I noticed immediately that the bun concealed a distinctly cheese-less burger; sad really, and inconvenient, but fixable, or so I thought. I went back to counter to point out the problem, perhaps I was simply given the wrong bag and somewhere someone was experiencing minor heart palpitations over the presence of cheese on their burger. But alas, I was the only non-employee within eye sight. (The other 197 had obviously come and gone.)

When Lucille finally reappeared from the bowels of the kitchen, I asked about the missing cheese. Still talking madly into her headset as if she were in the middle of landing the space shuttle, Lucille quickly grabbed for her copy of the receipt and snapped, you order plain!" Yes," I replied, I ordered my – cheeseburger – plain." She gazed at me for a moment, as if trying to decipher the foreign language I was speaking, or trapped in some sort of multi-tasking-gone-bad stupor, and finally replied, So, do you want me to put cheese on that?" Yes, please," I said.

Nike Zoom Turbines

Unable to move, my heart racing, I could feel sweat beading up on my forehead. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. Transfixed, I stared at the boy across the street wearing those shoes; bright-blue and red sneakers. Basketball shoes really, and there was a pride in his step.

The sight of those shoes jolted me back to the fall of my twelfth year. I felt queasy and like I was about to break out in hives all over again. Scientists tell us that smell is the most powerful memory inducer we have as humans. Apparently, these scientists have never seen a pair of Nike Zoom Turbines.

These shoes are cool. They have bright, deep navy-blue bottoms and bright, cardinal-red uppers with white laces and white soles. The shoe’s material spirals across and over the foot giving it the appearance of movement. They looked like they are about to jump over something impossibly tall. They didn’t sell these kicks at Mayfair’s.

The fact is, they didn’t sell them anywhere when I was twelve. But had you seen me standing there at Mayfair’s in my bright-blue and red sneakers, you would have thought I was the bomb. Well, not exactly, you see, this was thirty years ago. Bright-blue and red sneakers then didn’t say, “You is cool,” as much as they said,”You’re about to get your ass whooped.”

It was August and that meant summer was over and the school year was about to begin. Normally, the start of a new school year was nothing special, but this year, for some reason, we were going shopping for new school clothes. As the perennial recipient of my older brother’s hand-me-downs, I was unaccustomed to this ritual. Besides, our mother never took us shopping for clothes. If what we had still fit reasonably well, then we simply didn’t need anything. The problem, of course, was in the “reasonably well” part. Her litmus test was as long as your pants had more continuous fabric than holes and your legs were covered at least from the mid-shin up, then they fit reasonably well. Function and frugality were the major factors in their continued use; fashion played no part.

However, on this trip, pants were not the quarry. Shoes were. And this made a bit more sense to me, as my feet were not the same size as my brother’s. In fact, they were now larger than his and I could no longer wear his worn out shoes. This was the occasion when I was to get my first pair of new shoes. I would have be unable to contain myself if, at the time, I had understood what this could mean. But new shoes? I couldn’t even imagine it.

Off to Mayfair’s we went. Now you have to understand that Mayfair’s was a lot like what WalMarts are today, though not as large and they were devoted mostly to clothing and housewares. Mayfair’s were home to all manor of bargains. It was the kind of place that seldom saw any natural fibers, either in the merchandise or on its customers.

As we walked through the bin-lined rows and around the huge circular display stands, that resembled the corrugated metal troughs used to water livestock – huge livestock, loaded with clothes, some piled on the floor, I began to imagine the beautiful new shoes I would soon have on my feet. I pictured a new pair of loafers that would hold a shinny new penny in the front, or a perhaps a pair of sneakers. We called them tennis shoes, even though we knew they were not meant to be used to play tennis.

My mother was generally against sneakers. All sneakers. Her dislike of them was more about the fun you could have in them, than anything in particular about the shoes themselves. She believed in keeping your nose to the grindstone, and one simply could not do that in anything but Oxfords or similar “sturdy’ shoes. Sneakers were not be trusted.

It was towards the back of the store that my excitement began to be replaced with dread. The bin was large, to say the least. Much larger than any we had passed so far in the “Ladies” or “‘Lil Misses” departments we had traversed to get to the “Active Boys” Department. The bin was so large the walls were taller than I was. The only reason I could see what it contained was that the contents had spilled out over the edge of the walls and were splayed out on the floor.

My mother made a bee-line for the container. Her excitement was fueled by the over-sized sign hanging from the ceiling just above the impossibly large bin of shoes that read, in monestrous black letters, “Buy One Pair Get Another Pair Free - Any size.” As we reached the vat-o-shoes, she announced, “We both (that is, my brother and I) could each have our own pair.”

As we looked down at the shoes on the floor, each pair tied to its mate using the shoes strings of both shoes, as if to prevent each shoe from running away from the other. We stared at each other in horror. The shoes were, in most respects, sneakers. The upper part of the shoe was predominately white and bright-blue that did not resemble that of the type commonly used in sneakers. The sole matched the wide blue stripes that ran the length of the shoe across the top. The blue stripes were bespeckled with four large white and red stars that dotted the uppers from the heal to the toe. The entire shoe was shinny. Glossy, in fact, and was made entirely of plastic – at least that is what my brother and I concluded. The material has remained a family mystery ever since – but it was certainly not leather, nor was it any cloth presently known or even rubber. And, as it turned out, whatever it was, it was completely impervious to common household solvents, whether the contact was inadvertent or otherwise. The laces were a good foot longer than necessary to secure the shoe to your foot and they too were an unnaturally bright blue, with a small white and red tassel at each end. Yes, a tassel.

Our mother was madly digging to find our sizes. She could barely contain her glee. Nothing made my mother more happy than a bargain. And nothing was more of a bargain than something “free.” We had only one chance to escape the impending imprisonment of not only our feet, but our vary souls: if they had sold out of our sizes. This was not likely given the immensity of the bin and the sheer volume of shoes it contained. But we both prayed, my brother and I. It was the rare moment that the two of us found ourselves allied. We stood there as our mother pawed through pair after pair looking for a six and a seven and a half. My brother went down first as she hauled out a pair of sixes. “Try these on,” she commanded, and continued to dig.

I watched as my brother tied the bright-blue shoe strings of the second shoe. He stood there like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming sixteen wheeler. Shock gripped his body. The horror on his face was matched by the shaking of his knees. I thought he was actually going to faint.

I looked around, hoping there was no one we knew within eyeshot of the sale bin. Our mother was unaware of his condition, as she madly dug deeper and deeper into the pool of shoes looking for the seven and a halves. I began to shake. My mouth was dry and my ears felt like they were red hot. I was becoming ill. My first thought was that it might be a sympathetic reaction to my brothers pre-nervous break down I was witnessing. I soon realized, as she, my mother, emerged from the corrugated well with, a pair of seven and halves in her hands, that my illness was my own.

It seemed like an eternity, those two minutes. There we stood, the two of us, wearing our new, glossy red, blue and white starred shoes, with tasseled laces, which trailed behind us like a tether to a chain gang. Nike Zoom Turbines, they were not. I do not mean to imply that these sneakers were ahead of their time. But they were ugly in a spectacularly heretofore unknown way.

The rest of day was a blur. I remember arriving home and running into my room as fast as my legs and my feet fitted with clown shoes, could carry me. I must have looked less like a track star than a half-dressed court-jester, late for a birthday bash and animal balloon tying party, as I flew across the lawn and leaped over the front gate and darted into my room. It was not physically possible to have removed those shoes from my feet any faster. With them off, my feet and I rejoiced. The euphoria was short lived. I realized that tomorrow was the first day of school and that I would be fully expected to wear my new shoes. My life was about to end.

I wiped a small bead of sweat from my forehead and started walking. I watched the boy prance down the street in his red, white and blue Nike Zoom Turbines. I wondered if he was on his way to school in his first pair of new shoes?

Take My Money, Please.

When you get right down to it, the basic purpose of a business, any business, be it manufacturing, retail or even a service provider, is to take your money. While with some businesses it may seem more obvious than others, witness the cash register, they all do it in some fashion. In fact, it seems to me, that the ability to relieve cash from the pockets of their customers is what separates a good business from a poor one: certainly it separates a successful one from a failed one.

Having run several small businesses myself and consulted on many others, I can’t help but notice when I am shopping or having a meal in a restaurant or doing just about anything else as a consumer, how poorly most businesses are at taking my money. Many people see a long queue at a store as a sign of a successful business. After all, look at all these people waiting on line to buy something from this establishment. I see failure. A queue almost always means that this business cannot efficiently take your money.

The reasons for this failure are legion: under-paid, under-trained employees manning the cash register, poorly designed computers or software to process transactions, incorrect SKU numbers, out-dated inventory programs, redundant systems to help reduce employee theft. Whatever the reason, mastering the very basic function of the business has be neglected.

How many times have you walked up to a long line with your intended purchase and said, “I am not going to wait in that line to buy this.” And then left the store. The business had the merchandise. Apparently the price of the merchandise was fine, you were, after all, about to buy it. They accepted the form of payment you intended to use. Yet, they lost your business. And not necessarily to a competitor; they simply lost it. On the other hand, these millions and millions of dollars worth of “I-ain’t-waiting” decisions are no doubt ending up on the internet. No lines, no waiting and, generally, better money taking designs. One of the best businesses I have ever come across at severing your money from you fast is Amazon.com. I made a purchase five or six years ago, went through a reasonably quick “check out” process, during which I gave them my credit card information, and the merchandise arrived three days later (with no cost to me for shipping and completely tax-free). Fast forward to earlier this year, over five years later, and I keyed in my e-mail address, clicked on the item I wanted to buy and it was over. They had remembered all my contact information, my payment information and shipping instructions. The transaction took less than 30 seconds. And even if I had to have up-dated some or all of the information, or change credit cards, I still would have been out of the Amazon “store” in under two minutes. Now this is not to suggest that all internet purchases will be this easy or this risk free, but compared to the average brick and mortar check-out experience, there is no comparison. And it not just retail.

Consider this: how many times have you had to hunt down your server at a restaurant to get your check? Then you have to wait for him or her to come collect the payment and then you have to wait for them to bring your change or credit card receipt. Restaurants are notorious for failing at that one last little extra bit of excellent service they could offer. As far as they are concerned, most restaurants treat you as though once the meal is over their commitment to you ends.

Has your opinion ever changed after having a deliciously prepared meal at a restaurant, served efficiently by an attentive wait staff, only to be completely disappointed at the end when you had to wait an exceedingly long time for your bill so you could leave? And the irony for these businesses is this: the customer wants to give you his or her money! And you are making them take additional steps to give it to you. It is completely ridiculous.

I suspect that millions of dollars worth of well-placed advertising is wasted every year, simply because the business failed to consider the fundamental purpose for which they exist: taking your money.

My Name Peggy

If anyone has any lingering doubts that American businesses have lost their way, I invite you to pay particular attention to the customer service skills of any company or organization with whom you regularly do business. My reminder came recently, with a company with whom I had done business for over fifteen years.

If you think about it, customer service is the basis of any business. Even a monopoly has to pay some attention to its customers, or it risks customer revolts or crippling regulation. Witness the fate of the old “Ma Bell” of the 1980s or the mounting customer complaints against the cable companies today. And if you are not a monopoly, customer service is not an after thought or even a memo thumb-tacked to the back of the employees’ lounge door. It is the company. And without it, you are a company on borrowed time, because no matter how good your product or service is, if you cannot or will not satisfy your customers, then you have failed in your business.

As I mentioned, I recently experienced what it is like to be a customer of a business for whom I, as a customer, have no value. Here is what happened. After fifteen years of buying all my gasoline - and I mean all of it, from Chevron Oil Company using my Chevron Oil Company credit card and dutifully paying my bill every month, without fail and never late, I missed a payment. I missed a payment because Chevron Oil Company failed to send me a monthly bill. I know it was Chevron’s failure that I did not receive the bill and not the fault of the post office or other intermediary, because they told me so. They told me they had suffered a “glitch” which caused some bills not to be printed. That “some” included my bill.

When I discovered the error, I called them immediately to request a new bill, so I could pay it. They informed me that they would send me a “courtesy copy,” but that because the grace period had passed and I had not paid the bill, they would be assessing me a late fee.

Their response still confounds me. First, it was Chevron Oil Company that failed to send me a bill, as they have done for the previous fifteen years (that is roughly 180 bills. Well, 179). They then informed me that they would be sending me a “courtesy copy.” To whom are they being courteous. Not me. My agreement with them is to pay my bills in a timely manner. Their agreement with me is to send me a bill informing me of the amount I owe. The courtesy, if there is one, it seems to me, would have been to send the bill to me in the first place, as they agreed to do. After all, it is in their interest to send bills to their customer to facilitate payment of those bills.

Then, they informed me that they would be assessing me a “late fee.” Now, I realize that it is ultimately my responsibility to pay my bills. And I do, as soon as I receive one. It is the receiving of the bill that reminds me to pay. I, like most people, I submit, do not keep track of each of my credit card’s “cycle” dates each month. Rather, I rely, and reasonably so, on the vendor to send me a bill each month, which contains the amount I owe and the date the I owe it. I use that bill to pay the vendor what I owe. It is a simple and longstanding system, that is, generally, reliable. And when it breaks down, which, like most things is bound to happen once in awhile, human intervention is required.

When, on the occasion of such a system failure regarding my bill from Chevron Oil Company, I called the “Customer Service” number on my credit card. When my call was eventually answered, I felt like I had been transported into that Discover Card commercial. You know the one: an Eastern Block-like man is sitting in small room full of 1950s-style telephones, with dials, each having been fitted with a large red light, most of which are “blinking” indicating a call is “on hold.” The man, who is obviously the sole employee for this company’s “call center,” answers one of the phones which is ringing. The caller is customer who is trying to reach “Customer Service.” The call center employee, who is a large man with a husky voice, tells the callers “my name Peggy.” Not, mind you, my name is Peggy, because the irony, of course, is that not only is this man’s name not “Peggy,” but he can’t speak English either. Essentially, the call center is a fraud, the operator is a liar and the company who creates and maintains it has no integrity, much less any customer service skills.

After the twenty minutes I was on hold with Chevron’s “call center,” the customer service representative answered my call. It was Peggy.

I explained that I was calling because I had been charged a late fee and I wanted it waived. I asked him to look up my account and confirm that I had not, in the fifteen years prior to the month in question, ever missed a payment or made a payment late on this account. I also explained that Chevron Oil Company told me that they did not send a bill. Peggy confirmed everything I said and replied, “We not waive fee, that our policy.” Really. That your policy?

In a calm voice, which was masking my simultaneous outrage and disbelief, I said, “you mean after fifteen years of loyal use of your product you are unwilling to waive the late fee, which you caused?” “Is that the extent of your customer service?” Peggy, in a heavy Eastern Block-like accent, right out of the Discover ad, read, “Jep.” Not, mind you, “Yes,” or even “Yes sir” or “Sorry, but yes.” No, Peggy grunted, “Jep.”

I hung up the phone, cut up my Chevron Oil Company card (which had a line embossed on the front of the card that said, “customer since 1995"), and I have never purchased gasoline from them again. Nor will I ever.

Now, I realize that I am a humming bird’s tear in the Chevron ocean and that not only could Chevron Oil Company care less that I purchase all my gasoline from a competitor, but they won’t even notice my absence. Both of which simply reinforce my point: customer service is something only an excellent business understands. It is my sincerest hope, that others, who experience “customer service” the Chevron Oil Company way, will similarly send the message that Peggy does not work everywhere.

Bad Behavior in the School Zone

Why is it that the some of the worst and most dangerous driving happens around elementary schools? Schools which are the beneficiaries of additional laws and signage designed to minimize this behavior. The answer is the children. That is not to say that the children themselves are driving badly. Or are even directly responsible for the reckless or dangerous driving being exhibited on the streets in front of their schools. Rather, it is the result of this permeating attitude in our country (and possibly the world) that everything must be for “the children.”

It is with this mantra that parents everywhere, who might otherwise be rational, thoughtful and, perhaps, even courteous human beings, act like rude idiots. It is because they have to make that illegal u-turn in the middle of the cross-walk in order to deposit their little angels directly in front of the school so that, heaven forbid, “the children” will not have to walk an extra twenty feet on a sunny day.

It is also the reason that once “the children” have been delivered “safely” to the very front of the school, it is acceptable behavior for the parents to then cross three lanes of traffic from a dead stop, with out the use of a turn signal, a rear view mirror or any common sense whatsoever – not to mention any regard for the concept of “right of way” which governs all the world’s traffic flow, except that around schools.

Most people would never execute such a manoeuver in the real world, correctly deeming it illegal, too rude, too stupid or all of the above. But because “the children” were involved it has miraculously become acceptable. The consistency with which these death defying traffic stunts are performed in and around school zones is amazing. Despite the fact that as a society we have deemed these particular areas to be “special.” We have created “School Zones.” Inside which, we have instituted slower speed limits, usually installed more and newer traffic signs and even increased traffic-related fines occurring within such a zone. There are often even speed bumps or other physical barriers that have been added to the street or intersections near schools, all because we, society, have decided that “the children” are in need of more protection.

Yet the lack of safety near a school due to driver mis-behavior, has less to do with endangering the children than it does with endangering everyone else – particularly those of us who do not have children, yet find ourselves near a school. And, ironically, it is the parents of these school-going children who are the ones endangering “the children.”

At a school near my house, they have taken to placing a hand full of brightly colored three-foot high pile-ons in the intersection, because minivans full of children regularly run the stop sign in order to save that extra seven seconds it takes to make a full legal stop and to yield to other drivers. An intersection, which, by the way, has extra large, freshly-painted, bright white lines announcing the crosswalk, which can be seen from outer space. Still, someone thought we needed bright orange pile-ons to make it easier for driver’s to see the intersection. You know, for “the children.” The school constantly has its hands out, knocking on my door weekly, pleading for more money to buy “desperately needed” books and desks, yet they can paint the intersection weekly and buy a virtual forest pile-ons?

By 8:30 a.m. all of the pile-ons are usually laying on their sides and most are completely discolored with tire tracks. Pile-ons which were brand new, just days ago. So not only do I now have to look out for the soccer moms gone mad, but I have to negotiate the graveyard of toppled and wind blown pile-ons to get through street.

This complete lack of citizenry at or near schools is not limited to foolish, hurried or inconsiderate parents. The schools themselves have taken on a provincial attitude that is, again, for “the children.”

It used to be if you wanted to justify any and all anti-social behavior you simply waved the banner of religion; now the banner reads, “the children.”

Again the school near my home has come up with their own solution to the chaos that plays out every morning at the beginning of the school day as minivan after minivan full of children cut one another off and drive up and down the street with out regard to the normal directional flow of traffic looking for that perfect moment to duck into the prized front-door slot. The school simply annexed half the street. They bought themselves some paint and set out to created a “queue line” right there on the public street. A street they do not own. Had I similarly painted for myself a new lane on the street in front of my house, I would be writing this from jail. But because it is for “the children,” nothing is too much to ask, even equal application of the law.

Now, at least in theory, the minivans of children have a clearly marked-off area into which they are to pull their vehicles forming a line, waiting patently behind the minivan ahead of them to drop their precious packets off at the front door. And wait they do. Rolling up inch by inch until they are directly in front of the main doors to the school. All the while spewing clouds of exhaust into the neighborhood. Perhaps, the pudgy little children that are disgorged by minivan after minivan of queued up cars might be carrying a little less girth along with that Spiderman backpack if they had to get out two car lengths before the front door and walk.

In spite of the multitude of civil rights infringements we, the neighbors of the school, must endure, for “the children,” the bad driving continues. And we now have half the road we once had through which two-way traffic, of the non-children baring kind, must pass. Before “the children” there were two full lanes. Now, only one.

In addition to the increased property taxes I get to pay for the benefit of “the children,” I am now being taxed lanes of road. Perhaps, tomorrow they will take my front yard, as some sort of protective buffer, all for “the children.”