I'm a mean driver and I'm afraid I'll kill someone if I have to sit through one more traffic jam. What can I do?

-- Road Rage in Glendale

Oh my, road rage is, like, so 1998. Still, it's my sworn duty (meaning I'm paid to swear a lot) to solve the world's problems, even ones as trivial as yours. Since there's a pretty simple solution in this case, I'll fill up the column with a little education. Close your eyes. Imagine a filmstrip projector being turned on in a darkened classroom. Listen as I curse over the insanely complex film winding process and try to get the vintage 1969 Sony cassette player to rewind the audio tape without mangling it like a rabid dog with a bathroom slipper full of cocaine. In the mood to be educated? Good. Now open your eyes again, because it's damn hard to read like that.

Traffic jams, contrary to popular belief, are not due to massive amounts of vehicle congestion. The next time Bill Owens says he can fix I-25 backups with another lane, you can laugh at him, because you'll know the truth.

The truth is that traffic is caused by a short, 98-year-old man named Horatio.

Horatio (last name unknown) lives somewhere downtown in a small garden-level apartment with three goldfish and a dead marijuana plant (which the kid at True Value told him was rhubarb). He leads a mostly quiet life, full of Spaghetti-O's and "Family Feud" reruns. The only excitement he gets is twice a day, when he hobbles outside and plops behind the wheel of his beloved 1972 beige T-Bird.

Yes, everyday at precisely 8 AM and 5 PM, old Horatio goes for a drive. These drives are aimless and can take Horatio in any direction on any road, though he favors major streets due to his steering problem. You see, Horatio lost his fingers in World War I as a teenage roadie for the USO traveling entertainment extravaganza. This impediment makes it rather difficult for Horatio to grip the steering wheel, and the wheel slips this way and that under the anxious, exhilarating sweat that accumulates on his stumpy appendages.

Back and forth, at the approximate speed of 12 to 14 miles an hour, Horatio ambles along the roads, causing all lanes of traffic to stay a cautious distance behind in the hopes that Horatio will get tired and go home. If you're like me, and skip out on work nice and early, you might be fortunate enough to spot Horatio, screeching and weaving in the rising or setting sun to his palpitating heart's content.

So the next time you're caught in a cluster of cars that's stalled for no apparent reason, you can be pretty sure old Horatio is up there, somewhere. Take comfort in this thought, and instead of screaming and flipping the bird at the asshole in front of you, give a warm "Move it, you jerk!" to Horatio. Yell it good and loud, with the window rolled down, just in case he's miles ahead of you. Even though he's a little deaf, I believe that if we all just band together and verbally abuse the ancient cocksucker enough, he'll move back to California where he belongs.

And now for the solution to your problem, Road Rage. Ride the bus. You'll still have to sit in traffic, and your commute will probably take twice as long, but you have the attentive ear of your trusty RTD driver to yell into. And if the driver gives you grief, just say you pay RTD taxes to feed his kids. That usually shuts him up.

Is it possible to eat the banana peel? This guy I'm going out with now says he eats the whole banana with the peel and everything but I don't believe him and when I said that he showed me and now he's in the hospital.

-- Banana Girl

Judging by your boyfriend's intellect and your grasp of the English language, I see two possibilities here. One, you people are seven years old, and the answer is no, you should not eat the banana peel without first ingesting a healthy dose of glue. This will coat your esophagus and stomach (neck and tummy-tum in your case) and prevent possible banana peel death.

Two, you people are monkeys who stumbled onto a typewriter and happened to make a little sense, and the answer is yes, monkeys love bananas. Now go back to pounding out some Shakespeare, and don't forget to hit a punctuation key now and then.