From my terrace

I just watched something incredible take place.

I live on a fairly long one way street in Vigo. I like to go out to my 2 ft. by 4 ft. terrace and watch the people move about in the street. I say Hi to my bartender friend at the bar next to my house and then I just take a long pleasant gander. Tonight there weren't many people out but I saw some cars. Which brings me to the "big event" of tonight's gandering. At around 11:05 p.m. a smartcar came happily cruising down my street. Suddenly it decided it was going the wrong way (ruh roh!) and wanted to start back at the beginning of the street. I don't know if you all know how one way streets work, but you can only go one way. This smartcar however thought it could outsmart this accepted norm by going in reverse. But behind the baby smartcar was a large trash truck performing nightly trash collection. So what happens? The smartcar simply extended an arm and motioned backwards and forced a the trash truck up my entire street! The two of them reversed the entire length of the street until the tiny smartcar made its way in a new direction and beeped a friendly gracias. I watched flabbergasted at the entire situation. Here are the points I came up with for why this is all backwards (literally).

1.) The trash truck is a mammoth! It could easily have squashed the smartcar which is about 5 times bigger than the barbie car I wanted when I was five. (No I never got this).

2.) Can't smartcars like turn around in a doorway? It could of just turned around and squeezed past the trash truck without being so petulant, right? Or just zipped around the block!

3.) Did I mention the audacious smartcar was yellow? Of course it was. For me I can't even take smartcars seriously, and on top of that it was a goofy yellow color. Because don't we all already imagine the dashboard of a smartcar to be like a life size Boppit? There are just knobs and buttons and gadgets. And when you it runs out of gas it just chimes, "Game Over!" So, going back to point number 1, the trash truck totally should have stood up for itself.

My mom always told me she liked driving her big suburban because small cars moved out of the way for her. I would have liked her to be here tonight instead of the friendly trash truck. The smartcar would have said "Oh you didn't hear me, I said 'beep beep!'" And my mom's suburban would have said "Yes, and I replied 'honk honk... No'".

You see, in America big cars win! They say "No to going reverse on one way streets!" No time to reverse for you! Rush rush! Time, stress, one-hour lunch!! Big cars intimidate the little cars. And to keep little cars in their place we even host televised events where big bad trucks crush 10 of them at a time. But...... I am in Europe, where little cars are just as important as big ones and the people are nice. They have all the time in the world and no one cares about time efficiency or say, reversing up a street for a poor disoriented toy-car.

What does this ludicrous blogpost mean? It just goes to say that the logic I was raised with of big car vs. small car doesn't apply in Spain. Big cars coexist with small cars in the most Marxist automobile utopia you can imagine.

And also that my Tuesday nights are very uneventful.

That is all. Goodnight.