I cannot understand why people who live in the city feel it necessary to tool around in a vehicle as large as a city block. The parking for my apartment complex is a narrow multi-level garage. It's hard enough for a small car to fit around the corners, yet half the people in here own a gigantic magnum truck or an SUV that's bigger than my apartment.

I think part of it is just the fact that there are so many rural areas around here, and people in rural areas are inexplicably drawn to large trucks as a status symbol, preferably ones large enough to fit multiple stickers of Calvin peeing on a Chevy logo, Dale Earnhardt's racing number with angel wings on it, and those ridiculous "Support Our Troops" magnets which have spread and mutated like a virus (to the point where I saw one the other day with a picture of the late Pope John Paul II on it).

But it's not all rednecks and NASCAR fans, and even as gas prices remain high and the trendiness factor of SUVs fades into the memory of 2001, people with no families continue to buy $40,000 luxury behemoths with a backseat DVD player and multiple zip codes. And it's hard enough to maneuver these buses when you're not incessantly on your cell phone babbling about nothing in particular.

Posted by: Nathan at June 22, 2005 8:02 PM