Ride home today inspired a question: Why is it that I’ve never felt compelled to put on a seatbelt in a cab?  This despite the annoying “stars” in NYC cabs telling me it’s the cool thing to do, a long list of cabs that had “passed” their safety inspection (but clearly passed by way of a well-placed hundred dollar bill in an inspector’s palm), one accident, one heated argument with a cabbie that couldn’t reject his inherited Middle Eastern anger and took it out on the wrong guy (me) and more cab drivers doing their best to reenact the previous weekend’s Busch Racing Series action.  Nope.  Not a seatbelt has crossed my chest once.  I’d even go so far as to say I feel comfortable in the cab.  And that seems like a fool’s comfort given the aforementioned reasons I shouldn’t.

Now the pilot on the plane ride in, well I couldn’t tighten a belt tight enough to make me feel an iota of comparable comfort.  Maybe it’s because I shared drinks with The Man in the Stripes before we both boarded to plane?