Dave Barry - Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits

Too violent, you say? Shut up or I’ll break your legs. No, wait, forgive me. I’m a little tense, is all, from driving behind these people. But something has to be done, and I figure if word got around among members of the left-lane slow-driver community, wherever they get together—hat stores would be my guess—that they had a choice of either moving to the right or turning into clouds of charged particles, many would choose the former.

It is not entirely their fault. Part of the problem is all those signs on the interstates that say SPEED LIMIT 55. I am no psychologist, but I believe those signs may create the impression among poorly informed drivers that the speed limit is 55. Which of course it is not. We Americans pretend 55 is the speed limit, similar to the way we’re always pretending we want people to have a nice day, but it clearly isn’t the real speed limit, since nobody, including the police, actually drives that slowly, except people wearing hats in the left lane.

So the question is, how fast are you really allowed to drive? And the answer is: Nobody will tell you. I’m serious. The United States is the only major industrialized democracy where the speed limit is a secret. I called up a guy I know who happens to be a high-ranking police officer, and I asked him to tell me the real speed limit, and he did, but only after—this is the absolute truth—he made me promise I wouldn’t reveal his name, or his state, or above all the speed limit itself. Do you believe that? Here in the United States of America, home of the recently refurbished Statue of Liberty, we have an officer of the law who is afraid he could lose his job for revealing the speed limit.

When things get this bizarre, we must be dealing with federal policy. Specifically we are dealing with the U.S. Transportation Secretary, who is in charge of enforcing our National Pretend Speed Limit. The Transportation Secretary has learned—you talk about digging out the hard facts!—that motorists in a number of states are driving faster than 55 miles per hour, and she threatened to cut off these states’ federal highway funds. So, to keep the Transportation Secretary happy, the police have to pretend they’re enforcing the 55 limit, when in fact they think it’s stupid and won’t give you a ticket unless you exceed the real speed limit, which varies from state to state, and even from day to day, and which the police don’t dare talk about in public for fear of further upsetting the Transportation Secretary.

I told my friend, the high-ranking police officer, that this system creates a lot of anxiety in us civilian motorists, never knowing how fast we’re allowed to go, and he said the police like it, because they can make the speed limit whatever the hell they want it to be, depending on how they feel. “It used to be,” he said, “that the only fun you had in police work was police brutality. Now the real fun is to keep screwing with people’s heads about what the speed limit is.”

Ha ha! He was just kidding, I am sure. Nevertheless, I think we need a better system, and fortunately I have thought one up. Here it is: The state should say the hell with the federal highway funds. They could make a lot more money if they set up little roadside stands where you could stop your car and pay $5, and a state employee would whisper the speed limit for that day in your ear. What do you think? I think it makes more sense than the system we have now. Of course, the Transportation Secretary wouldn’t like it, but I don’t see why we should care, seeing as how the Transportation Secretary probably gets chauffeured around in an official federal limousine that is, of course, totally immune from traffic laws. Although I imagine it would be vulnerable to atomic land torpedoes.

It’s football season again, and I know I speak for everybody in North America when I make the following statement: rah. Because, to me, football is more than just a game. It is a potential opportunity to see a live person lying on the ground with a bone sticking out of his leg, while the fans, to show their appreciation, perform “the wave.”

And football breeds character. They are constantly scrubbing the locker rooms because of all the character that breeds in there. This results in men the caliber of famed Notre Dame player George Gipp, played by Ronald Reagan, who, in a famous anecdote, looked up from his deathbed and told Pat O’Brien, played by Knute Rockne, that if things ever really got bad for the Fighting Irish, he (O’Brien) should tell “the boys” to win one for the Gipper. Which O’Brien did, and the boys said: “What for? He’s dead.” Ha ha! This is just one reason I am so excited about the upcoming season.

Before I unveil my Pigskin Preview, however, I must say a few serious words here about a problem that, regrettably, has reached epidemic proportions in the world of sports fans. I’m talking about male cheerleaders. I don’t know where you grew up, but where I grew up, there were certain things a guy absolutely did not do, and cheerleading is about six of them. A guy who led cheers where I grew up would have been driven around for a few hours inside somebody’s engine compartment. Most likely Steve Stormack’s.

So you may call me insecure if you wish, but I am deeply troubled when I see young men on TV bouncing up and down on their tiptoes and clapping like sea lions, and the fact that they get to hug the female cheerleaders and sometimes pick them up by their personal regions is not, in my view, an adequate excuse. I am calling on you sports fans to write letters to U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese urging him to appoint a federal commission to issue a concerned and bulky report about this issue, so that we sports writers can put it behind us once and for all and get back to writing stories about what should be the topic of interest on the sports pages: drugs.

Drug testing is very big in football. This is because football players are Role Models for young people. All you young people out there want to grow up and have enormous necks and get knee operations as often as haircuts. That’s why the people in charge of football don’t want you to associate their sport in any way with drugs. They want you to associate it with alcohol. During televised games, you’ll see announcements wherein famous athletes urge you not to take drugs alternating with announcements wherein famous ex-athletes urge you to drink beer. Good luck, young people!

Now let’s take a look at what kind of action we can expect to see this season on the actual “grid-iron” per se. As in previous years, football will be divided into two major sectors, “college” and “professional,” the difference being that professional players receive money, whereas college players also receive complimentary automobiles, although many teams will be hard-hit by strict new academic regulations requiring that a player cannot compete unless he can read most of the numbers on his gearshift knob. Nevertheless, I look for an action-packed college season in which major teams featuring linemen named Dwight who have the size and vocabulary skills of cement trucks trash a series of amateur schools by scores ranging as high as 175-0, which will earn them the right to play in such New Year’s Day classics as the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Liquid You Drain Out of a Can of Artichoke Hearts Bowl, although unfortunately not against each other.

In professional football, I look for a very exciting and competitive season until about a third of the way through the first game, when Injuries will become a Factor. These injuries will of course all be caused by artificial turf, which is easily the most dangerous substance in the universe. If we really wanted to protect Europe, we would simply cover the border regions with artificial turf, and the Russians would all be writhing on the ground clutching their knees within seconds after they invaded. And then the Europeans could perform “the wave.”