BUGSERS get the point without quibbling, but the term “tailgating” refers to a traffic violation and the cause of many accidents in the two-lane highway days.
Today it usually means picnicking by dropping the back door of a station wagon.
My meaning was obvious to myself, BBG and HD, who are in our Advanced Youth, but you Age Challenged folks had no problem with it.
There was a whole set of customs that went out with the two-lanes, just as a whole centuries-long set of customs went out when men stopped wearing hats. Can you imagine some 30-year-old guy who is wearing a backwards baseball cap to act twelve taking off the cap for a lady in an elevator?
You always had to tailgate when you wanted to pass on a two-lane. You had to get a stretch of road on the other lane where nobody was coming. You flicked your lights.
But then there were the people who insisted at following you at sixty miles an hour with a bare car length between you. That was really irritating. They didn’t want to go faster or pass, but they just had that lack of feeling about distance, and it irritated the crap out of you.
Only one time did a patrolman pull over a guy who was tailgating me. It is such a fine feeling when a cop EVER arrests somebody for doing something that really threatens or irritates YOU.
Almost the only response you ever get from a cop was, “Well, if he DOES anything to you, call me from the hospital.”
There is another word that makes me want to giggle in a childish way totally ridiculous for a man of my Advanced Youth.
This is the term “swipe.”
All through my young days, the word “swipe” had one meaning and one meaning ONLY.
To swipe something was to STEAL it. That meaning was really ingrained in my mind.
Now I stand in line for a cash register or even in a bank, and I can see the credit card machines inviting me, in large, friendly letters, to “swipe!”
“Please swipe!”
That may be hard for you to really understand. You are, after all, Age Challenged.
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