Normal - so they say

So I don't know about you but I tend to be skeptical of places that have certain declarative adjectives in their names. There is just something about the need to identify a place in such a fashion that makes me feel as though someone is trying to lie to me. But then again maybe I'm just a bit bitter for having grown up in a place called Franklin Centre, which can only be the centre of nowhere if it's the centre of anything. Hell, even Google maps doesn't have the town, pardon me village, in the right place. It gives you an idea how little there is there.

Anyway the reason I have been thinking about descriptive names has to do with my commute to and from work. One of the neighbourhoods that I have to pass through is called "Normal Heights". Now that's a clear sign that something is going wrong in the area. Are they trying to say that all the other "Heights" are abnormal, or are they just desperate to be considered normal too?

Either way I've been able to see through their lame attempt at trying to fit in with everyone else. It really becomes evident when I bike through the area. See, it's only in this neighbourhood that I have noticed a disturbing and slightly worrisome trend. Whenever I'm approaching an intersection where I have the right of way and a car is waiting to pass through my path they all seem to do the same thing. They don't shoot through really fast to try and beat me, which sucks when people try it because they usually underestimate my speed. And they don't sit and wait patiently for me to ride past as they are supposed to. No, in Normal Heights it's "normal" to creep through the intersection while waiting for me to pass. To the point where I'm not sure if they are just trying to line me up better to run me over or just drive really slow and don't see me coming.

It really does piss me off, because that's not the kind of shit that someone would do if I was in a car. When was the last time you slowly drove through a lane and a half while "waiting" for a truck to pass through the intersection?