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Word of the Day: Carpool
I only realized the other day, after living in Japan for over 20 years, that carpooling is a foreign concept here.
I had to explain to a person that even though American cars are big enough to install a pool in, that’s not what a carpool is.
A carpool is a group of people who travel together, especially to work or school. Usually, they use a different member’s car each day or week.
If you think about it, it makes sense.
Four adults can ride in a vehicle quite comfortably, and instead of having four different cars containing one person each, it’s more efficient for four people to ride in one car.
It creates less traffic on the road, too.
Carpooling began in the US during the Second World War to conserve rubber, gas, and wear-and-tear on vehicles.
Nowadays, people carpool for the same reasons, but also because it’s better for the planet.
I suppose it’s a foreign concept for the Japanese because most people ride the trains in cities, and even if everyone carpooled, there still wouldn’t be enough parking spots for all those cars.
After graduating high school, I worked with my father in construction for a few years.
I’d never recommend any son work with his father, but that’s a different story for another day.
Anyways, he would pick up four guys in the company truck each morning on the way into the shop, and we’d all carpool together.
It was all right in the morning and a good bit of fun, but on the way home in the evenings, it was another story.
Why?
Can you imagine carpooling with six big men after they had worked hard for 12 – 14 hours?
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 69.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.