Blinkers are like people.

A lot of the things I find awesome in life revolve around similarities and differences. Metaphors and similes. Tautologies and metonyms. Puns that smudge the borders between grammarnazi-ism and hilarity. You see this a lot in my writing. And in my humor – as well.

My favoritest joke (*which mostly proves that I am an acquired taste*):
**‘Do you know the difference between a tampon and a teabag?’**
*-confused silence, often followed by a ‘no’-*
**’Well. I’m sure as fuck not having tea at your house then!’**
*-insert me laughing hysterically-*

And I work through a lot of issues in my life by taking something entirely normal and basic from my day to day life – followed by finding the similarities between that simplicity and the complex world of feelings, and the bigger picture and my life’s meaning and goals and such. It’s surprising how often that works AND yields interesting thoughts and realizations (followed by, hopefully, some personal growth).
You will definitely recognize this if you’ve been reading my writings for longer than these previous 10 lines.

Today, as I was driving to the office, I pulled up at a crossroads near my house where people always drive like madmen. A car came up in the distance with its blinker on (*to turn into the road where I was waiting*).
I didn’t move.
And as I was standing there – unnecessarily unmoving – I realized that it was because I didn’t trust the blinker. He had that indication light on so far ahead that I figured he must’ve forgotten to turn it off at the last turn – instead of it indicating that he was indeed gonna pull into my road. I just waited to be sure.
He still pulled into the road.
My past experience had made me unnecessarily doubtful about the correctness of the blinker.

A couple of kilometers on in my journey I reached a roundabout and pulled to a standstill again because a car was already on it. Blinkerfree. Bound to pass right in front of me. This dude, however, pulled into the road next to me WITHOUT turning on the blinker, meaning I stopped for him even though I didn’t have to. Douchebag.

And sure enough, on the final stretch to the office I spent about 5 km driving behind a Skoda in the left lane with its left-turn-blinker CONSTANTLY on (even though there was no lefts anywhere to be had) because they forgot to turn it off. Only to be nearly killed by a Beemer pulling into a non-existing room between us WITHOUT using any sort of blinker whatsoever (as is mandatory for any BMW driver, obviously, dingleberries).

Blinkers have a very clear goal in life. They have a purpose. They have rules. They have etiquette and they have value when used correctly. Blinkers are awesome.
Thing is – SO many people in life are clueless about blinkers. Careless about blinkers. Bad drivers. Douchebag drivers. HORRENDOUS ‘PLEASE TAKE AWAY THEIR LICENSE’ DRIVERS (aka – me). We all know how blinkers SHOULD work and COULD work but adapt ourselves to be wary of them (*whether they’re used, abused or forgotten*) because of some special specimens that made us lose the trust in the system.

I find that blinkers are a lot like men. And red flags in dating.
Oftentimes we see them for what they are – we recognize, register and respect them for what we know them to be. However. Just as often we ignore them because we’ve been proven wrong in the past. Interpret them differently because we put them in our own contexts (usually blinded by love). Miss them, because we’re not paying attention. Forget them, because our minds are in entirely other places.

But with both blinkers, men and red flags: a mistake in interpretation could possibly mean a horrible horrible crash. We NEED to keep paying attention. But we also NEED to not take things blindly, just in case. A blinker isn’t always a blinker. And nothing blinking doesn’t necessarily mean safety. And just because it was blinking correctly once – doesn’t mean it’s gonna be an accurate blink every time. Because even though they’re awesome AND CAN tell us a lot of valuable things about someone’s driving or personality – they also might just be fucking bad drivers. Or Douchebag Dingleberries.

Blinkers you guys!
Blinkers are like flaggy people.
#Simile.