Cash for Cooters

Image from voteprime on Flickr

Irritated Tulsan came up with a wonderful idea he calls "Cash for Cooters". The idea is to take those annoying people we dislike and trade them in on newer, hopefully more positive ones. He wrote of his own office cooter, saying that "he's one happy meal away from a heart attack." It's an adorable phrase and one I will undoubtedly steal.

I have my own office cooters, of course, but I think of them in conjunction with, oh, the Spanish Inquisition, pliers, blow torches, and the never ending hell of television game shows.

We cyclists have our own version of cooters, too. They're often the ride nanny, the one who yells, "Car back!" in ascending tones when riders ignore him, until only local dogs can hear his squeaky voice. They get genuinely angry when their authority isn't heeded, and heaven forfend one of us should question them or even exhibit any intelligence or reason.

One local club insists that everyone participating in their ride must sign a liability waiver. My thought was that if they're not planning to do something genuinely stupid or illegal, it's not necessary. They also insist that everyone wear a helmet, despite the absence of a mandatory helmet law in Oklahoma. There was some serious tut-tutting going on when two guys rode sans helmets. But these rides take place on public roads, so unless they're shoved aside bodily, there's no way to stop them.

So maybe we can cash in the ride nannies, the cooters who take on that awesome responsibility of annoying the rest of us. Maybe we can work out some sort of ratio, like maybe 10 cooters for one hot babe in spandex, one that's just a little bit faster than me. It would clearly elevate my heart rate, and as Mary points out, I wouldn't know what to do with her if I caught her anyway. That is, unless she could cook.