I wish. . .

I wish I was rich. Pathetically, hopelessly, beyond all imagining rich. Not because I'd want lots of fahncee designer togs. Not because I especially like all the mansions I've seen. Not because I want to be written about in NYT's Page 6. I'm not greedy, I just want to be rich.

I've been driving the Monkey to her school every morning before work, and picking her up every evening. She has "winter camp" (which is a glorified day care), and there is no school bus. It's tiring, because her school's in Bel Air

and I live in

da 'hood.

In between, I go to work in Century City, which is nice, but is full of dipshit blowhards that consider themselves the premier movers-and-shakers of this fair city.

With all this driving (which I admit does not even compare to the daily commute most people have, but this is all on surface streets, people), there is only one phenomenon that continues to baffle me. I know getting stuck behind a roach coach going up Sunset is going to take a while. I know traffic going into and coming out of the canyon roads is going to be backed up. I even expect people to drift in and out of the curvy lanes due to inattention or poor driving skills. The one thing I just can NOT wrap my head around is the proclivity of rich folk to stop on a whim. Not for cross traffic, not for emergency vehicles, and certainly not for traffic signals. Just for some unknown reason that catches their fancy. There they are, the denizens of the hills, in their mercedes and beemers and hummers and even, this morning, their rolls's. Plunk. In the middle of a major thoroughfare. And then, when they decide they have blocked the road to their satisfaction, they meander along, as if they had done no wrong. Tra-la-la-lah. I wanna be rich like that. Where I don't care who gets injured or delayed or inconvenienced. Where if someone dares to hit my car, I rest assured my lawyer will take care of them. Where I don't even register the honks and epithets hurled in my direction. That's how rich I want to be.