Born to regulate.
For one delirious moment I thought maybe I'd missed my true calling.
Last night as I stopped for a traffic light I found myself suddenly mesmerized by an otherworldly yet somehow reassuring pastel figure beaming at me from the back of the SUV ahead.
Was it a vision? An alien? Time to retire? Could I retire?
The glowing vision moved and I realized that what I was seeing was on the monitor of a rear DVD player. Parent was distracting Junior in the back seat with a kiddie cartoon. Works for children of all ages, I'm here to say.
Then the regulator's mind that lurks within me and all the other less fortunate clanked furiously into motion.
Wow, that cartoon really got my attention.
In fact, it was really distracting.
I wonder why it hit me like that?
I guess because I've never pulled up behind an SUV with a DVD playing before.
Maybe I have, but this time it really stood out in the darkness. And it gets dark early now.
Wow.
Double wow!
Some driver less focused and incredibly disciplined than me (remember, I'm a steely-eyed, stern-visaged regulator now) might have been distracted by that cartoon, lost control and careened into that SUV!
I've just done what every regulator lives for: discovered a new menace to society!
Or made one up!
I'll hold workshops and hearings!
I'll invite every special-interest group with an axe to grind, and every crank with a grudge to nurse!
I'll even take them seriously! Or, even better, pretend to!
I'll get to be judge, jury and executioner!
I'll get to be conductor, ringmaster and impresario!
I'll get to issue a heavily-footnoted report warning that the number of accidents caused by drivers distracted by rear DVD players (zero) is "only the tip of the iceberg"!
I'll get to say that the number of such accidents is "expected to skyrocket"!
Who "expects"?
I expect!
I expect this to be my ticket out of the hell of ant-like Bureaucrat Grade 5 and into the earthly Valhalla of ant-like Bureaucrat Grade 4!
I woke up screaming.