Capturing En Passant

The gray car in front of me dawdles. It's a compact sedan, of the Subaru-Suzuki-Toyota-Saturn class. It has mildly snarky enviro-gendero bumperstickers on the back. When I say "dawdles," I mean driving at the appointed city speed limit of 30mph, obeying every caution light, cautiously proceeding without changing lanes. Steady. The driver is a young female, so you can dispose of your notion of a geezer refugee from Florida driving in snowy Syracuse.

As would be the case, I am in a hurry. Or I am in a hurry more than she is. Rather, I am in a hurry more than she appears to be. Even that's wrong. The only "hurry" I'm in is in my head; I have no pressing appointment I am late for, no work-related or social appointment ahead of me. I just want to get home. It's not even that. Ms. Dawdles slows me down, alters my rhythm, puts me at 45rpm when I want 78rpm; she's frustrating me. Can't she see that?! I assume she's not doing it on purpose, because when I pass her (that's how I know she is a young female, in her twenties), she is stoic, impassive, determined, focused on the task at hand, blinders on, oblivious to me, as she should be.

I pass her.

As in a video game, I snake around her and weave through traffic, not hazardously, but quickly enough to erase the frustration of her vehicular dead weight in front of me. I turn right at the light at the crest of a hill and sail toward my apartment building. For no known reason, I sneak in through the western entrance, from the front, not through my typical entrance, near the parking lot.

Have you heard that experts claim weaving in an out of traffic gets you no further along more quickly? I don't know if the so-called expert findings apply only to highway traffic. Nevertheless, I can testify that on more than one occasion I have passed a slo-mo vehicle only to find I have beat him or her to the next red light, where we both wait, as equals, one on the left, another on the right. True, sometimes I have sensed victory be squeezing by, through the caution light, leaving the passed car in the dust, captured there by time and space until the light turns green -- and initiating the remote possibility we shall meet again, as equals, at the very next red light.

Chess has a move called capturing en passant. It means capturing in passing in French and refers to a change in the rules, so to speak, that enables a pawn to be captured when it advances two squares just as if it had advanced one square. Sort of like the aforementioned meet-at-the-red-light scenario.

When I turned right to go to the parking lot for my apartment, approaching from the south not the usual north, guess who slowly glided past me? You got it. Ms. Dawdles! She beat me! How? And don't recirte that turtle and hare fable.

She got out and walked toward the building entrance. She must have been a visitor because I did not recognize her car.

I chuckled to myself, not being someone who typically erupts into LOL. (Who really is?)

I don't know what this portends or what lesson to learn.

I'm refraining from easy metaphors.

I'm not so "quick" to go there now, anyway.