This past Saturday morning was one of the more enjoyable and generally entertaining that I've had in the last three years of living, while balking at any sign of senility, by reading, researching, and writing, in this, ideal for me, "penthouse" apartment. Here, one has a wonderful perch from which to view the comings and goings on First Street. My window "beat" includes the street through the Court Square. The enjoyment in observing the driving habits of one's fellows is enhanced by the ever promising and comfortable position of my computer. I can both work and watch the antics of drivers on the street below and beyond.

You will recall that all day Saturday a small amount of snow covered a large layer of treacherous ice on First Street's four lanes of traffic. The street was especially slippery before lunch, and generally dangerous all day. In other words, it was a perfect scenario for the good people of this area to "display." Such pre-mating level male displays of their driving in dangerous conditions also gave one insight into their personalities, and suspected intelligence levels, and the apparent abandonment, in too many cases, of what mental faculties they did have. Drivers often put their brains on hold, simply because they get behind the wheel of a car. Saturday's ice pilots lack of skill was too delicious for an old student of human behavior to ignore. They were one's lab animals at their zaniest. What's not to love? They entered (this time drove into), once again, the "Skinner" box (I'll explain that, boys, at the next barbershop seminar, it's about white rats in a maze)

At around 7 a.m., drivers were very few, and they were driving very slowly, keeping safe distances between cars. One assumes they were older male drivers being directed by their wives, for young people normally don't get up that early on weekends. As the morning wore on, traffic increased, and by 11 a.m. one was treated to the frequent sight of out of control, and impatient, younger drivers sliding onto snow-lifted curbs. They had not allowed room to stop when the car leading them stopped, or, for that matter, just slowed for a turn.

Then, there was the driver, usually of a pick-up or SUV with very loud non-mufflers (the purchasing of which perhaps indicates a neurotic fear of early sexual impotence) who was "displaying" by driving much too fast for control. It was fun to watch them spin out of control, recover, and then drive markedly more slowly, as if suddenly chastised, or scared? Such brief moments of redemptive safe driving, caused by the shock of a pregnant collision, are usually fleeting in young, and not necessarily, slow learners.

Why does a driver (usually young) insist on driving at unsafe speeds, even in normal conditions? It's quite simple. He seems to think that for him to drive more sensibly than his peers would mark him as less than male-dominant for life. The less secure a young man is in his maleness, the more he must "act out." (One has observed that this exclusively male attitude is usually a teenage "thing," and disappears in the middle twenties, until old age, and then it reappears in such symptoms as male "road rage," usually the result of impotence in the aging "buck.")

In his driving habits, the teenager is "displaying" in the same way that male game birds show their feathers, puff out their cheeks, and jump up and down on spot, to attract females. Some male birds raise one wing to expose a white "armpit." And if showing one armpit doesn't work, they'll show the other. By the way, many male birds, once they accomplish sex, move from being an impatient lover to becoming a caring parent. That's called "nature," something we don't see enough of in today's outrageously high rate of irresponsible couplings among young humans, resulting in evermore poorly cared for children.

There was one driver that I didn't see, or rather hear, during the "global" return of freezing this past weekend. That was the driver of a "wake the dead," "performance audio system," vehicle. You know, cars loud enough to rattle your windows. I did not hear one of those sound littering, polluting, instruments of major peace disturbance, all weekend. I don't know if we have an ordinance specifically making it illegal to operate such vehicles, but it seems to me that playing music that is clearly "hearable" (audible) outside the car is bad enough, but if you can hear the music, or the low frequency "bump-tee-bump-bump-thud" 75 feet away, that's grounds for a charge of disturbing the peace.

Of course nothing will be done about the origin of such noise, masquerading as music, until the manufacturers get sued for noise induced hearing loss by the drivers of such cars. It will be easier to attribute "noise induced hearing loss" to boom cars than it was for lawyers to prove that cigarettes cause cancer and lung disease. The sound source is objectively measurable, and the hearing loss is objectively measurable. That makes for a good case, scientifically speaking.

The next wave of tobacco-type successful lawsuits will result from the suing of manufacturers who advertise their products as "wake the dead" in their output, and whose products live up to their claims of being able to "shake the earth."

However, that doesn't answer the question of why cold weather kept the "boomers" off the street. Could it be because street corner drug sales are greatly reduced by extremely cold weather? One of the elements of a profile of a "druggie" (seller and buyer) is that he often rides in a "boom" car. So, it might follow that there were no serious noise polluters out this weekend because it was too cold for low-level drug dealers? Now, certainly all boom car drivers are not "into" drugs, but national studies of drug arrest records indicate the importance of close surveillance of boom car passengers.

Then why would a non drug user want a car whose sound system can be heard from more than a hundred feet? Psychologists suggest it is because the drivers of such cars feel inferior in some significant way about themselves. They attempt to "buy" recognition in many different ways, "Look at me, don't you hear my car." "Look at me, see how fast I can drive on the snow." "Look at me, see how many holes I got for attaching metallic objects to my body." "Watch me spray gravel when I "dig out," can't you see how that makes me a big man?"

Is it a pathetic admission of a feeling that they are "nobodies?" Or, is it like, otherwise intelligent, adults who engage in "square footage battles"with their neighbors when building new houses? Perhaps it's all Freudian, just a result of not being breast fed as an infant. Maybe it's all a subconscious desire to return to the womb? Who knows? We do know it's all infantile, at any age.

Much male behavior, some normal and some a little weird, as we have alluded to throughout these observations, is only partly understandable when it's clearly related to "displaying" for mating purposes, and some of the mating aspect appears to work, for we seem to have an unending supply of "doofusses."

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.