A Typical Day

So, I’m driving home the other day after a really long day at work, and I begin to merge onto the freeway. Now, you have to understand where I work--a small college town in East Texas--the freeway is really a long stretch of two-lane road with its own set of rules. If you’re doing less than 80 in the left hand lane, you need to get the heck over or get run over. This is understood. No one will honk at you--that would be considered rude. They will, however, ride your bumper for five miles until you get the message and MOVE OVER. The other rule is, since everyone is pretty much doing 80 all the time, when you merge, you merge fast. Those in the right hand lane when you are attempting to merge need to get the hell out of your way, or slow the hell down to let you in (pardon my French).

So, a big 18 wheeler is in the right lane, far enough back, with no one in the left hand lane to get in its way, when I start to merge onto the freeway. I’m speeding up...and so is he. I check his left hand lane--no cars, so I figure, okay, dude’s gonna pull to the left lane and let me in. He doesn’t. He came up right on my left bumper, and then just kept coming. That idiot ran me off the road right into the breakdown lane! Scared me to death. He didn’t even acknowledge my presence. I was very nearly killed--could have been if I’d lost control of the car, since the breakdown lanes here are pitted to wake you up as you go over them--hard to drive on.

I was ticked! At first, I’m just yelling at the guy, “What are you, nuts?” Then, I happened to see that, unlike most Texas trucks, he’s got one of those little handy “How am I driving?” signs on his back bumper.

Well.

Now, gotta figure, if a man's gonna drive like a freakin' maniac, he ought not to have a sign on his bumper that says, “Call my boss if I run you off the road.” So there I am, driving 85 miles an hour with my cell phone stuck to my ear trying to read the number on the back of his truck, and at some point the guy realizes what I’m doing. He tries to speed up, dodge me in traffic, but I’m not havin’ any of it. I GOT HIS NUMBER. Oh, yeah, baby, I did.

“I’ll report this to the driver’s supervisor right away, ma’am.”

Heh heh heh.

Boy, that felt good. So good, in fact, that as I passed him on the two lane highway, I even resisted the urge to give him the one fingered salute. Just waved and smiled a lot, knowing a three day suspension without pay would be waiting for him when he got home.

That’ll teach him to mess with evil minded Californians who know how to seek revenge.

Heh heh heh.

TJB