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THE I-95.

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THE Highway
THE Highway

Having lived on the I-95 corridor, learning to drive inside the Corridor of Hell otherwise known as the Capital Beltway… when I first moved to Buffalo, all of the road names sounded really bizarre to me.  And it wasn’t because they were long and had too many consonants (you try pronouncing Scajaquada your first day in town!)  It was because they all came with THE in front of them.  And there were so many different TYPES of “highways” — THE thruway, THE expressway, THE highway, THE skyway, THE, THE, THE.

But there was also none of THE traffic that I had become so accustomed to.  And suddenly, I had all this time to get lost and figure it all out and even my directionally challenged self could wander her way from The Point A to The Point B because this place was designed by a genius and it all became so natural that I started to put THE in front of everything.

Like, THE Netflix.

THE Google.

Anyway.

As time marched ever onward, and the gaps between my visits back to Virginia grew further and further apart, and I grew less and less accustomed to even-seeing-red-taillights-let-alone-actually-ever-sitting-in-anything-even-REMOTELY-resembling-traffic!!!(GASP-OH-MY-GEESE-DEEP-BREATH-I’M-SORRY…)  The lingo followed me on my travels, and inevitably, the cultural use of the word ‘the’ which had first seemed so humorous to me, was now the cause of mirth amongst friends, relatives, and complete strangers when I left the calm, quiet roads of Western New York behind.

When my mother’s sudden collapse caused me to not just return to the Corridor of Hell mentioned above, but spend several weeks of the Holidays actually commuting in it again… there were definitely more than the average linguist slip-ups as I found myself FUMING about the absolutely ridiculous conditions the citizens of Virginia face EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

On THE I-95.

Because The Thruway back home?  Just isn’t like that.  EVER.

“Lol! That’s so funny that you call it The Thruway!”

“Yes well, let me tell you why I think you’re funny.  There in Northern VA, or NoVA, you have: Just. One. Highway.  I-95.  And you crazy people sit on it all day.  It took me 6 hours on a WEEKEND DAY to get from Baltimore to Richmond.  Do you know what we do in WNY when we get on the Expressway?  or THE Scajaquada?!? or THE 198?!? We EXPRESS from one side of our city to the other!!  Sca-JACK THAT!!  Guess how THE Thruway works?  THE 90?!? It gets us THROUGH, around,  OVER, and across the city.  WITHOUT stopping or slowing down!

YOUR Highway is a corridor for meeting new friends! Because you can race each other at 2MPH down 75 miles of 12 lanes of traffic yelling “Hi!” at each other all the way home!!  It’s a ‘Beltway’ because you’ll be able to tighten your belt by the time you get to dinner because you’ll have been starving sitting out there breathing fumes!!”

Just wanted to point out that teensy difference.  I’m going to call it The I-95 for the rest of my life.  It deserves the extra attention.  Because it’s infamous.  For being THE lamest way to spend a Sunday ever.

True story.

 

 

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