I have my own ice cream story that still traumatizes me.
We were returning from Johannesburg to our home in Kanye, Botswana, and as we passed through Lobatse, a small town in southern Botswana, we remembered that there was a drive through fast food restaurant, so we parked our heavily loaded truck, walked in, and ordered soft serve cream cones. Back in the truck, we drove away and I worked on my ice cream. Suddenly, I bit into what felt like a big piece of lint, spit it out the window, and when I looked into the cone, I saw globs of lint and a used bandage.
I heaved the thing out the window and desperately tried to sanitize my mouth. I would have gargled anything, diesel, gas, transmission fluid, anything to get the horrors out of my mouth.
While I was focused on my desperate oral hygiene situation, a policeman walked out into the road with his right arm extended straight out, palm first, while he blew a whistle as we stopped the heavy truck. He trotted to the driver’s door, held his arm out straight out again with his palm toward us and angrily asked, “ When I hold my hand like this, what color am I?”
In the cab of the truck, we glanced nervously at each other. “Umm, the same color as you are now?”
“I am red when I hold my hand this way. Red means to stop.”
He extended his arm again, but this time, held the back of his toward us and used his fingers to beckon us forward. “Now what color am I?”
We were catching on. “Green?
“Yes, green. Now go.” So we went, wiser in several ways than we were before our stop in Lobatse.
Which raises a question about how does one learn the rules of the road in different countries? An American friend was working on getting his Zambian drivers license and was doing the oral exam.
First question: “What must you do immediately after stopping along the highway?” It was kind of a trick question and the answer was to place your car’s fluorescent safety triangles behind the car. My friend quickly recovered from the question and stated that he would pile tree branches along the road behind his car, “just like everyone else.” The examiner seemed satisfied.
For the next and final question, the examiner asked why one should never hoot the hooter while crossing a bridge. My friend had no idea. “Because it will frighten your passengers riding in the pickup, they will jump out, fall off the bridge and drown.” Apparently it was a common enough occurrence that drivers needed to know not to do it.
Only MAD magazine and Switter can blend daily events in this manner. Bravo. And thanks.
International driving regulations - seems to me you have to think on your feet. I thought you were being stopped for littering with that horrid ice cream cone. I can almost taste it in my mouth. That’s a real feat, since I lost my sense of taste over five years ago. You used great descriptive words.