Mating Season…

…happens in the early spring most of the time.

You got the birds and the bees doing it, the dogs and cats, as  well as a large population of various domestic and wild  animals. It’s such a natural phenomena that it usually passes  unnoticed, with the exception of those pain in the ass cats  who howl and scream at each other in the wee hours of the  night  demanding submission from their partner.

I’ll tell you this much, if someone screamed at me that way the  last thing they’d be getting is sex! I’d clamp my legs together  so tight it’d take a crew with crowbars to separate them. As a  matter of fact, I’d be off and running ‘cause if they scream at  you before sex, God only knows what’s going to happen later  on down the road.

These are signs that must not be ignored poeple.

I’ve discovered that Los Angeles has a human mating season that runs year round, but it doesn’t take place in the bedroom—it’s takes place on the surface streets, parking lots and wherever else people and cars can mix.

Here in LA there’s millions of cars on the road at any given time of the day. Even in the wee hours of the morning you can see the stream of headlights moving along the freeway like a trail of lava. Where  everybody’s going at that time is anybodies guess. Maybe they’re going to work or coming home from work, out partying or just flat out wasting gas because they’re bored, but there out they’re morning, noon, and night.

By my estimates about 10% of these road warriors are seniors, 75% are the money-makers—you know—us—the baby boomers, the shakers and the movers, and last but not least are the 15% who fall into the teenagers/young adult group.

This last group of course is the most worrisome. Not that we don’t have to worry about some of those seniors out there who have trouble discerning which is the gas peddle and which is the brake, or the baby boomer whose financial empire is about to fail and they’ve got six tons of metal and chrome to vent with.

My concern is the teen/young adult group. They’re so technologically user friendly, it’s rare to see one of them driving without a phone clamped in the palms of their hands as they try to talk/text/photograph whomever or whatever strikes their fancy while travelling at high speed. From my experience this usually always takes place right next to my car. And, oh, by the way, if you DON’T see the phone in their hands you should be especially careful because that means they may have dropped it on the floor and will likely start swerving about in order to retrieve this precious communication system.

What worries me even more is that they also seem to be searching for love on the road. I’ve seen it first hand, this banter that goes on between drivers who happen to catch each other’s eyes.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for looking for love—but while you is driving? Come on people, this does not seem to me when you should be doing anything but keeping your eyes on the road with your hands placed precisely at the ten o’clock/two o’clock position on the steering wheel.

I guess this shouldn’t surprise me that much since the world has become this big pulsing beat that is so fast paced, if you don’t have a hold of the knot at the end of the rope, well, you’re in big trouble. You’ll be so left behind your kids will wander around aimlessly with that world famous question—Where’s Mommy?

Of course Dad, whose kept pace with technology all along as it progressed, will then in turn have to tell them that Mom missed the boat. She’s lost somewhere between the 80’s and the 90’s. He’ll then explain that she picked up the computer far too late, she can’t do anything with her blackberry except make and receive calls, and once you tell her East or West instead of left or right there’s a good possibility she may never be seen again.

Hell, this world’s so fast and easy you don’t even have to get out of your car at Starbucks any more. Yep, you can just drive through and never waste one precious moment of freeway time.  They all cruise around the building at a snails pace, but the very second that cup is in their hands they peel out of there like their pants are on fire. Yes, we Angelian’s love the coffee God!

Anyway, I got caught up in one of these mating sessions the other day after I dropped my son off at school. There I was, just sitting there, minding my own business when this young girl pulled up next to me. She stopped just slightly ahead of me but I could see her perfectly through the back passenger door window. I guessed her to be somewhere in her late teens/early twenties. She’s got her hair tied up in a knot of some kind on the top of her head. I recognize this knot because my daughter wears this same style. I’ve named it the Sumo Roll for obvious reasons. Okay, so this girl is probably cuter than I think but her face is covered under the biggest pair of sunglasses I’ve ever seen. I mean really, these things were so big you could barely make out any of her facial features.  They seem a little excessive size wise but maybe this is how she saves on sun block.

Her car, well, it’s not so much a car than it is pieces of metal screwed together, and it appears to have been, at one point, some shade of blue. My guess is she’s an avid driver/texter by the amount of damage I can see just on this side of the car. Oddly enough I also notice a small patch of grass hanging down from the bottom of what once was a shiny chrome bumper. What had replaced the factory authorized safety device now looked more like tin foil that had been used, scrunched up, and then recycled in the form of a bumper.  This crash I realize must be fairly recent since the grass is still showing signs of life and there’s a tiny sprinkler head peaking it’s head out of the patch and it’s still dripping water. What a lucky sod!

Now I’m curious about the interior of her car so I roll forward a little, just enough to snoop but not so obvious she’ll turn to look at me. The back seat is covered with piles of clothes, water bottles, empty coffee cups, empty cigarette packages, and a bunch of other things that I can’t actually recognize. This is what I’d call the typical teenage car. I know it like the back of my hand. I’ve got one just like it sitting in my driveway at home.

I notice that not only is she chewing gum, she’s also got a freshly lit cigarette hanging from her lips. Her fingers are flying across the keyboard of her phone at the speed of light for what seems like the worlds longest message composed on a phone. She sets the phone on the dashboard for a brief moment and removes the cigarette from between her lips. I see a pink bubble squish out through her lips and when it pops, there’s a small cloud of smoke that lingers in front of her. Holy crap!

I’m thinking that if there was ever an award for personal multi-tasking, this girl takes the cake.

On the other side of my car I see a brand new shiny white BMW pull up just slightly ahead of my car. This one is driven by a boy who looks twenty something as well. I watch as he looks at the girl across the one lane span. I see he is trying to get her attention so like any good voyeur I crack the windows on both sides of my car so I can hear them.

“Hey,” he calls out to her tapping his horn just a little to make sure he gets her attention.

It takes her a minute to respond. She turns the radio down and yells back “What’s up.”

“Wanna hang out?” he yells.

“No.” she says and rolls up the passenger side window.

Flash forward to the next light where we’re still aligned in the same way. I notice both her windows are down again.

He taps the horn in another attempt to get her attention then yells out his single greeting of ‘hey’.

She sees him again and turns the radio down.

“What?” she says.

“Can I call you?” he yells back as he waves his cell phone towards her.

She shakes her head no.

“Come on we’ll have fun, maybe we can go some hooka,” he says hoping this will entice her.

“Where do you live?” she responds.

“I live with my folks…er…I live in Hollywood.” he says trying to cover up his error.

She smiles the most beautiful smile at him showing off her perfect chicklet teeth then her window starts to roll up.

I look back at him and he’s got his hands up in the air as if to say WTF. He tries one last honk but the light changes. She flips him off even though she’s still got that big smile on her face then makes a left hand turn. He chucks his phone down on to the seat and speeds away.

So I’m thinking to myself, I wonder if this ever works.

About ten minutes later I pull up to another of the million lights I will get caught at on my way home. Sitting beside me is a kind of gruff looking young man. He looks to be around my daughters age. I decide to try out my own version of car mating just for the hell of it.

I roll down my window, tap my horn and wait for a response. Nothing! So this time I blast the horn. Well that gets his attention and he rolls down the window. His radio is so loud I have to shout.

“Hey you wanna hang out smoke some hooka?” I ask even though I’m wondering what I’ll actually do if he says okay.

“What?” he screams back at me seemingly annoyed.

“Wanna go smoke some hooka?” I yell back.

He looks at me, then looks out the drivers side window to make sure that I’m not talking to someone else, then turns back to me.

“No maam, I don’t. Jesus Christ aren’t you a little old for this?” he yells at me then shuts the window. Now he’s staring at me like I’m a complete idiot.

Cut me like a knife that little bastard did when the word ‘maam’ rolled out of his puckered lips.

But I persist. I wave my cell phone at him, make the ‘call me’ gesture with my hand, and wait for his response.

His window rolls down, I hold my breath.

“Get away from me lady,” he screams at me.

I ignore his protest and mouth the words ‘call me’ one last time.

The light changes, he stick his hand out the window, flips me off then speeds away leaving a little rubber behind to show his disgust that some old woman just hit on him.

So I rethink what went wrong. Maybe I have to try this with someone more my age. Someone who won’t be disrespectful.

I spot my next victim about two lights later and man this guys good looking. You know the type, suit, briefcase, bitchin car.

I roll up next to him and see his windows are down.

“Hey…wanna hang out, smoke some hooka?” I yell through the open window.

“Pardon me?” he says like he didn’t hear exactly what I said.

“Come on, let’s go smoke some hooka…” I yell back so there is no way he won’t hear me.

He looks over at me, shakes his head, rolls up his window, then goes back to watching the light. I tap the horn one last time but this time when he looks at me I’ve already got my hand in that telephone position, you know, thumb and pinky pressed to my ear and I yell out ‘call me’. He rolls his eyes and makes a dash out of there even though the light’s still red.

Oh well, I think to myself. It was a fun experiment. That’s when I hear the loud blast of a horn.

I glance over at the car that was next to good looking guy and see this old  Armenian man ogling me. Actually I can’t decifer if it’s a lear or an ogle, but either way, this guy looks like a piece of work. My guess would be he’s maybe seventy, seventy five. He’s actually waving a big red hooka pipe at me and nodding his head in the yes motion, all the while moving his bushy eyebrow up and down in that weird little come hither motion. I see he’s got a front tooth missing and he’s a little short in the hair area and I believe he’s wearing one of those blue plaid matching shirt and short sets, which means he’s probably also wearing white knee high socks.

Crap!!!!

I train my eyes back on the light praying it will change. I roll my window up to block out whatever he’s yelling at me because I can’t understand what he’s saying anyway as he spews out in his native language.

That right there was enough to put an end to my little experiment. As I headed towards home to hubby I felt eternally grateful that I didn’t actually have to pursue this ever again.