I didn’t qualify for office last week, putting another early end to what surely would be a genius political career of truly tremendous and amazingly incredible and patriotic proportions, bless my beady little heart.

And even though I probably would have been immediately promoted from city councilman to congressman, and then to president, that’s OK. I’ll get ‘em next time.

But that’s neither here nor there.

What is here and now is commuting to work, something that most of us tend to have to do because we have to pay bills so other people can sit around the house on taxpayer funded benefits and plot revolutions to overthrow the system paying them benefits to sit around the house.

Anyhow. What I’ve noticed after some three decades of commuting hereabouts is that commutes have gotten longer, even though, technically, they haven’t. The office is still where it was a couple of years ago.

We did up sticks and downsize some, but that was only about a quarter mile.

So, the less than 50mile round trip commute I frequently drive basically remains the same in terms of distance, though for some time I had doubled it to work in Hinesville.

What’s changed is the time it takes to cover that distance, thanks to all the traffic and maniacs and lights and things in the way. This includes an ever increasing number of drivers who either want to run you over or you’re tempted to run them over because they: A) look at their phone and drive between 10 and 20 mph below the posted speed limit, which everybody knows is just the starting point for mph when it comes to driving in Georgia, then speed up, then slow back down, then speed up again only to have to send that message to a BFF, or, B) They get in the fast lane and poke, backing up traffic and causing people who probably don’t even have driver’s licenses or insurance to nut up and go full Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome.

I’ve seen it. Time and time again. Patience wears thin faster than ever, and we’re all one commute way from sitting in traffic for 17 hours because somebody pulls out in front of somebody on a whim.

Just the other day some angry looking fellow hauling a big utility trailer behind a 2000 model pickup with giant tires and a Georgia “G” front tag rolled up on my back bumper in downtown Meldrim and stuck there, gunning his motor. Which obviously made me slow down even more.

One thing I’ve learned about angry looking bullies is it’s fun to make them madder, until they shoot you.

Anyhow, I finally pulled over to let him go. I started worrying maybe he was late for a court date to get his license reinstated.

I do wish I had a solution for traffic, but I don’t other than to quit making so much of it. Either that, or build more roads, or stop building roads to speed it up and then building stuff alongside roads to slow it back down again.

I do think there might be a way to make driving more fun, anyway. As a condition of getting a license, motorists should have to use accents of the country of origin of the vehicles they drive.

For example, those obviously important Range Rover drivers will have to speak like Hyacinth Bucket and say things like, “Mind the lorry, Richard,” and “Don’t let Onslow in the house.” Kia drivers will have to speak like South Koreans.

BMW and Mercedes drivers will have to say things like “Gott om Himmell, das autofahrer ist der trottel” and “wo ist der krankenhaus!, mein bustenhalter ist zu fest!”

You want to speak American? Drive a Ford.