Keep Left Unless Overtaking

Dooley Noted: 3/13/2014

While on our Australian road trip down the Great Ocean Road, the great Jenny Richardson drove on the left side of each street.

I was the annoying passenger, marveling constantly that I was in the American driving seat but was sitting shotgun.

Dooley: “Jenny, this is tripping me out! How are you doing this?”

Jenny: “Kathy, we’ve always driven on this side.”

As passenger, I became flabbergasted with the alterations in signage.

Yield signs read as, “Give Way.”

Warnings against intoxicated vehicular ambulation read, “Drink Drive, Die in a Ditch.” (They call it drink driving, not drunk driving.)

But I was most taken with the signage regarding passing, which Australians call, “overtaking.”

Each time a passing lane emerged, a sign read, “Keep Left Unless Overtaking.”

I wanted my picture taken with that sign so much that I nearly leaped out into the “motorway” (read: highway).

I’ve always had the same sentiment as that sign, in regards to the people trying to block my career trajectory.

That sign was the motto of my whole life’s work, from high school to current times.

That motto became this mantra, developed on an Australian road trip:

People for years made attempts to nay-say, taking their shots to step in my way.