A friend recently invited me to a pool party at his house. His neighborhood is one of those hoity-toity ones that has a Home Owners Association. You know about those, right? That’s where, under the full Power of the Law, they can send you all kinds of nasty letters if your garden gnome had an earlobe broken off. “Super-glue it back on before we park a busload of lawyers in your driveway!”

In such neighborhoods, they like to put these speed bumps in the road every fifteen feet or so, all under the guise of safety. So it is in my friend’s neighborhood. I’m all about safety, but they seem be taking this a bit to the extreme. In fact, one particular speed bump had a roadside marker noting it as the highest point in the state. How they can make it over these in their little BMW’s and Saaabs without spinning wheels I’ll never know.

So there I am, driving to the party, with a six pack on the floorboard in the back seat. With every bump I cross, I hear those bottles rattling. Luckily, none broke, but it turned out I wasn’t out of the woods. Upon my arrival at the party, like a good little guest, I immediately stake out my place in the kitchen. (Everyone at any party seems to congregate in the kitchen; it wouldn’t matter if the Rolling Stones were playing at the poolside, everyone would still hang out in the kitchen.) I open my first beer, and an eruption the size of Old Faithful ensues, and I am doused with a Shiner Bock shower. I should have paid attention to the rumbling as I removed the bottle from the six-pack, but I was ready for a beer after navigating streets that would make a mountain biker drool.

I honestly think that these speed bumps they are putting on the streets these days are a conspiracy. It’s been promulgated by auto repair shops and companies that manufacture shock absorbers.

I finally understand the fascination that some seem to have for monster trucks. They may need a fire-truck ladder to get in, but those darned speed bumps don’t faze them any more than if they ran over a twig.