Clueless

We've all seen it. The Camry driver who is so oblivious to what is going on outside of his or her own little cocoon of blandness that he or she should simply not be driving anymore. Their car should be seized in exchange for a lifetime bus pass. Here is the latest in a long line of clueless Camry operators:

Last weekend I went to a big Saab meet-up in my region. It took place at a now-historic 1950s drive-in/diner which is well-known for hosting car shows and car club gatherings. A secondary parking lot at this drive has signs which read something like "Reserved on Weekends for Car Shows." In other words, don't park in that lot if you aren't in the show. I arrived and backed my Saab into a spot beside another Saab. More Saabs were arriving and backing in. I think we had over 25 Saabs at our gathering. As the Saabs were arriving, so did a tan Camry, piloted by a frumpy middle-aged woman with two grade-school aged children in back. She pulled in and parked between two of the Saabs in our group, then proceeded to waddle over to get a big order of fries and root beer floats.

The primary parking lot of the drive-in was less than half-full, yet she bypassed that lot and then parked her dun-colored appliance in the middle of our shined-up Saabs. Jaws dropped. People stared. And away she waddled, clueless that we were staring, let alone that she had parked in the middle of our gathering. Eventually she and her greasy-fingered offspring returned to their car, haplessly backed out of the spot, and drove away. A late-arriving Saab driver carefully reversed into the spot she had vacated, and all was right in the world. Actually, all was right in the parking lot. All was still not right in the world, because Tan Camry Lady was surely off to cluelessly bungle somebody else's afternoon.

Fast-forward eleven days, to this very afternoon. I got an email from the Anti Camry comment reporter, letting me know that Gary from Car of the Day had commented on my blog. It turns out he shares my views on Camrys and their siblings. I read of his disdain for the hated transportation appliances, and left a comment. He later posted a small piece about this very blog on his site. I've started the stopwatch, as my fifteen minutes of fame havae surely arrived. I'm totally famous on the internet. As my head spins from the excitement, my iPhone beeps a reminder that it's time to go pick up my daughter from daycare. I grabbed the key to the Saab 9-3 Aero convertible I'm testing this week for Autosavant and headed out the door.

On my way across town, a formerly-gold Camry, whose ten-year-old paint resembled the texture brushed fiberglass of a former colleague's failed Fiero-to-DeLorean conversion, darted out of a grocery store parking lot, across three-and-a-half lanes of traffic, and stopped at a red light, straddling two lanes of traffic. As I approached that red light in the road's right lane, I crept up to the light near the sidewalk so that I could be beside the Camry and therefore get ahead of it when the light turned green. As I waited for the light to change, I was thinking that I could write about this car on for the Anti Camry. The car had no wheelcovers, a visibly dirty dashboard, and a broken front-passenger door handle. The driver wore no seatbelt, though the passenger, text messaging on a cell phone, did. The driver glared at me as I looked over his sorry car. When the light turned green, I roared away before he even managed to figure out which pedal he should step on to make the car go. I saw him in my rearview mirror just before I turned off. It looked like he had finally decided to go with the right lane. It had only taken him a half block to make that decision.

Even though I'm not writing regularly here on the Anti Camry, rest assured that fleets of tan Toyotas are still bungling me up. I just haven't got the time to write about them as often. I do still believe that the purchase of a new Toyota should come with free-and-mandatory driver training. They should also come with a sticker on the front window that reads "Keep Right Except To Pass". Not that the drivers would actually notice. Because they are clueless.