The other day I was driving in Connecticut when I came upon a huge, HUGE traffic jam. I am not one of those “prurient interest rubberneck” people AT ALL, in fact, I have great disdain for people who like to look at car accidents, therefore making the post car accident traffic even worse, because I think it further traumatizes the people in the accident, but that’s a whole different story.
This story, my friends, is about poop. Or, potential poop, because honestly, I think that’s what was causing the traffic backup. Because you see, the car crash in question (which seemed to be without injuries as far as I could tell) involved an RV, and this RV was turned on its side, and all at once it occurred to me as I was looking at the wreck, and the fire trucks, and the multiple police cars, and the hazmat/ Roto-Rooter type truck, and the tow truck that were all “on the scene” and taking up space in the lanes so that traffic was moving at the pace of “one car at a time,” and that the only possible explanation for this was that someone must have side-swiped that RV, which turned over, and since RVs have bathrooms and stoves and a bunch of other stuff inside them, there must certainly be chemically-laced poop on the highway. That, or the fact that there are so many chemicals inside an RV, when one turns over you really have to send everyone, because of the potential for explosion or potentially dangerous chemical spill.
Does this sound like an erroneous conclusion? If you have an alternate theory, I’d love to hear it, but it seems to me like they must have a special code for “overturned RV” in the highway patrol/ traffic division of the police, and when they hear this code, they think “Poop on the Highway” and they immediately call the roto-rooter guy in case that needs to be cleaned up. The fact that this list exists somewhere and that this has happened enough times to even warrant a list is at once funny and sort of comically tragic to me, because really, driving around with a house on wheels IS a little bit ridiculous and excessive, don’t you think? It also makes one really consider the iterative process that must have gotten them to the point where they would send that many emergency response vehicles to the site of an overturned RV—like, when RVs first came out, one probably turned over, and a lone highway patrol guy showed up, and was like “Oh…oh my God…..wow. I am totally not prepared to deal with this on my own.” Then more people must have been added, and more, and more, and now there when they call in a “6758,” which is my made up call number for an overturned RV, ninety kajillion emergency response vehicles show up, because who even KNOWS what could have happened in there, people? Who. Even. Knows?
Also, no, I did not rule out that this might have gotten worse since “Breaking Bad” came out, because now the highway patrol must every RV as a potential rolling meth lab.
Finally, a special happy birthday shout-out to my cousin-in-law Josh, who I’m sure will be thrilled to have his birthday associated with poop and a hazmat spill. Have a great day Josh!
