Traffic got you down? 10 points to world peace

By Jim Shea of The Hartford Courant

The average person spends 46 hours a year stuck in traffic. Although this seems like a lot of time, it actually understates the traffic-jam experience because it fails to convert man hours to dog years.

If you really want to quantify what it feels like to be parked in the fast lane day after day, you have to multiply 46 x 7, which comes out to just a few high-blood-pressure points shy of a fortnight.

Traffic jams are kind of like Donald Trump: No matter what you do, you can’t avoid them.

You can leave earlier, you can leave later, you can try every alternate route on the map, but regardless of where you go, there you are.

So the trick becomes adapting to the inevitable, or risk one day ending up with your head hanging out of the car and your trigger finger on the power-window button.

Here are 10 things to do to pass the time while trapped in a traffic jam:

1. Count the bladder explosions in the vehicles around you as too much coffee and too little forward progress take their toll. As an added diversion, keep track of the casualties by coffee preference: black, regular, light.

2. Teach yourself to perform the “1812 Overture” on your car horn. Once you have that down, practice tapping out Morse Code with your high beams.

3. Every once in a while, stay put when the traffic moves, and then monitor the rearview mirror to see how long it takes the forehead veins of the guy behind you to turn magenta.

4. Keep a sharp object in the glove compartment, and use it to perform any minor surgical procedures you may have been putting off.

5. If it’s around dinner time, call a favorite telemarketer just to chat.

6. If it’s morning, plug in the George Foreman Grill, and make breakfast. (It’s the most important meal of the day, you know.)

7. Relieve some of the tension with yoga. As any driver who has ever dropped something hot between his or her legs can attest, it is possible to perform the down dog posture while maintaining control of a vehicle.

8. Visualize world peace, and if this gets boring, visualize world peace naked.

9. Check all visible bodily orifices for signs of wear and tear, and do any necessary clipping, cleaning or scheduled maintenance.

10. Compose little, light-hearted poems as a fun release for your pent-up feelings:
I hate big trucks.
I hate SUVs even more.
I hate all of you.
Get out of my way.
I’m losing it.