I despise speed bumps. I would bet good money that there’s a correlation between their burgeoning numbers and Utah’s birthrate. You see, instead of batting our speeding teens up the side of the head, we build speed bumps and then slip the lead foots the keys to the Hummer. There are probably five speed bumps to every Utah teen and three times as much cursing as we all eerk, squeak, squeak our merry spasmodic way through the trailer park. However, after watching my grandma waddle across the street from her condo the other day with only a one-finger salute and a speed bump between her and the teens she was taunting, I have softened up a bit. I mean, hey, such a heartening display of geriatric rage should be admired, if not encouraged.
Moreover, speed bumps are not without precedent. Look at adolescent acne--speed bumps to underage sex. Then there’s wrinkles, baldness, prolific coarse-and-gray ear, nose, #@*!$ and back hair--speed bumps to overage sex. And finally, marriage--speed bump to any sex.
No, we should not forsake nature nor humanity's creation of risk reducing remedies but improve upon them. For instance, to curb birthrates, don’t just extend the virtues of marriage to just gays--let poodles, mosquitoes and guppies marry. Similarly, we could create a bra with multiple rows and layers of fake breasts and give all adolescents hair-growth hormones so their wandering fingers, searching for the craggy peaks of the Misty Mountains or heading towards the forbidden forests of Fangorn, get lost in the foothills or tangled in a mass of bristling shrubbery.
We could require tobacco companies to lace cigarette filters with glass shards as speed bumps to nicotine addiction. We could force breweries to design containers so that intoxicating spirits seep out in infuriating droplets--speed bumps to alcoholism. And while we’re at it, let’s engineer all of our roads so that if a driver dares exceed the speed limit, he and his vehicle will be pummeled into molecular oblivion. If we do these things, birthrates will drop, our driving ranks will mature and mellow, and then we’ll be safe to eliminate all the speed bumps. Yeah, baby--move backwards to go forward.
Let’s do it! All I ask on our way to speed-bump utopia is that we impose a speed-bump tax to replace my brakes and adjust the suspension on my, uh, well, car.
Loren M. Lambert
September 7, 2003
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