Baseball Hall-of-Fame catcher Yogi Berra is probably more well know for his legendary quotes than his on field performance. These quips have affectionately become know as Yogisms.
Among the most famous:
“Its like deja vu all over again.”
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
“Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.”
“I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.”
“It gets late early out there.”
Perhaps my favorite Yogism is: “Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”
I love that quote. It’s equal parts absurd and poetic. But, the more I think about that famous line, the more it relates to my life in Atlanta. Specifically, dealing with Atlanta traffic.
I can’t tell you how many times I have not gone to a concert, a ball game, a party or a restaurant simply because I didn’t want to deal with traffic. Basically, in the immortal words of Yogi, I don’t want to go there anymore, because it’s too crowded trying to get there.
Think about your day-to-day life in the metro area. Have you ever not done something that you wanted to do simply because you didn’t want to fight traffic? Have you ever cancelled plans because traffic was too bad? Has anyone ever cancelled pans with you because of traffic?
It happens to me all the time. I love eating at great restaurants. It is one of my favorite social activities. From five-star cuisine, to meat-and-threes there is nothing I like more than sharing a good meal with friends. I am blessed to live in a city with so many fantastic dining options. Unfortunately, there are many legendary establishment in the area, both fancy and low key, that I’ve never been to, simply because I don’t want to deal with traffic.
A great example of traffic impacting me socially happened this summer. I was given six great tickets to a Friday night Braves game. Great seats, great opposing team, beautiful weather. I sent out an email to some of my closest friends asking who wanted to go to the game with me. A majority of them declined the free ticket citing that there was no way they were going to fight traffic on a Friday night to get down to Turner Field.
Amazing. And these were big baseball fans! I suppose there’s a chance that my friends just didn’t want to go to the game with me. It’s possible, but each rejection came in a separate email, each pointing to traffic as the reason for the decline.
Perhaps Yogi said it best:
“If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them.”
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