Funny Mental Insights: 40: The Traffic Circle of Doom

Today, I'm supposed to write about something that annoys me.

They put a traffic circle (what you might call a roundabout) at an intersection in my home town of Slidell, Louisiana recently. From the conversations I heard from friends and acquaintances, you might have thought that it was specifically planned to kill as many Slidellians as possible.

Some Slidellians thought that most (other) Slidellians were too stupid, stubborn, or scatterbrained to figure out how such a thing as a traffic circle worked. There were predictions of massive accidents, huge traffic tie-ups, the downfall of democracy and the beginning of a thousand years of Satanic rule. (Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit.)

The fact is, the traffic circle works great, even if the signs are overly confusing, and there's currently an ugly mound of dirt in the center. (One of the kids suggested that we put a statue of the leprechaun from Lucky Charms cereal there. I'm all for that.)

The thing is, doomsday scenarios exasperate me. It seems that lots of people seem ready to see the end of the world (in one form or other) predicted by all kinds of things. If you look historically, the worst possible case almost never happens. In fact, you can probably get away with saying that the worst possible case never happens and be right often enough to be considered a genius.

People seem to want everything in good or bad. People are either heroes whom Abraham Lincoln would ask for advice, or villains who could give Pol Pot pointers. Programs are either the saviors of jobs, lives, and liberty or the destroyers of prosperity, health, and souls. Traffic circles are either the best thing ever, or the death knell of all that is holy.

This really annoys me. I want to learn and to share and to create and to explore and to love, and I can't do that very well if everyone's too scared of the end of the world.

I've heard that the commandment Jesus gives most often is "Fear not." We should listen to him sometimes.