Dear toll booth administrator

Funny prompt writes a letter

(These are the ~ funny prompt ~ words: Giggle, wiggle, laugh, guffaw, snicker )A letter to officialdom prompted this response to ~ funny prompt ~

Dear toll booth administration:

On Tuesday, July 6, 2010, I was driving on I-294 from Wilmette, Illinois, to Cincinnati, Ohio, and missed a toll booth.

I realize this is a sin to the Toll Booth Administration. In my defense, I would have had to clone myself and my car to make it over to the toll booth.

A big road sign directed me: Indiana Stay Left. I was driving to Ohio via Indiana, so I got left. Within a minute or so, another sign said: Toll Booth Keep Right.

Left? Right? My car cannot wiggle – not with lead-footed drivers tailing me.

You have obligingly taken this missing-of-toll-booths into your bottom-line planning and set up a Web site for drivers, such as I, who, placing preservation of life and limb first, fail to make it from way left to way right in a nanosecond. We can send checks for our missed highway tolls. On the Web site you ask that I provide the name of the particular toll booth I missed.

Guffaw.

It is astonishing to me that any driver lacking NASCAR training actually maneuvers out of 80 mph-plus nose-to tail traffic to a right-lane dead stop to place coins in the hands of a toll-taker. Or to memorize the names of toll booths flown by.

(While, I believe your system is an invention of insane bureaucrats and demented engineers, I’ve found toll-takers to be exceedingly polite. Perhaps, you could turn your entire operation over to them; they seem to like people. Like them enough to, say, care that they stay alive.)

Need I say this: Your toll booth system is dangerous.It is hellish.Insane.

Perhaps Chicago-landers are used to this twisted method of taxation. They appear used to highway indignities and a high level of motoring stress.

Perhaps they laugh and snicker at out-of-staters. We who have not had NASCAR training.

Yes, I know Chicago drivers may purchase passes to place on their windshields. Happy possessors whiz by toll booths without fear of being hunted down and whoppingly ticketed. But what about us out-of-towners? What about the occasional I-294 traveler?

How many accidents occur at toll booth entries and exits?

Who designed this system? Really. I’d like names. Were they under the influence of laughing gas at the time – giggling at the predicaments they set in motion?

You ask for my home state and license number and type of car.That information is enclosed.

Also enclosed is a check for $2. Cheaper than losing life and limb trying to go left and right at the same time.

I'll take the bus next time.

Sincerely,Mo Conlan

After toll booth, return to home page