I remembered I had this story written up and emailed out to my friends and family about 9 years ago (geesh has it been that long??).  I thought I would post it for True Story Tuesday.

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November 2002

To all my friends and family not living in the big city-

This event happened this week on my way home from work.  It is just one example of how you take your life in your hands by driving during rush hour.

So, I was speeding my way home after work on the interstate and came upon three vehicles abreast of each other, all going at the same speed in the three lanes.  There was a dump truck in the far left lane, which since we were at the beginning of a nice long hill, he really shouldn’t have been there. I was annoyed, of course, so I moved to the middle lane, anticipating the dump truck to start slowing down as we went up the hill, as they usually do.  We were maybe going 5 mph over the speed limit (I, of course usually go about 20 mph over), when this Buick comes zooming up on us and throws on his brights to show them they were in his way.  I glanced over, expecting this to be some young guy who has yet to learn the rules of the road, and amazingly enough it was an older guy with gray hair.  Turning his brights on everyone had their predictable effect – everyone slowed down.  We will call this guy S.O.B. from now on…

I slowed down to give S.O.B. some accident room, since he appeared to be making some rather bad driving decisions at this point.  Next, S.O.B. decides the best course of action is to straddle the left two lanes so his brights will shine directly into dump truck driver’s side view mirrors.  I give S.O.B. more accident room at this point.  Dump truck driver slows down even more. 

Just to interrupt my story a little – one of the cardinal rules of the road is “Do not irritate a vehicle that outweighs yours by 10 times and can flatten you like a pancake”, notably loaded dump trucks and eighteen wheelers.  But I digress…

S.O.B. sees his opportunity to go into the middle lane and then zoom in front of dump truck driver.  S.O.B. now slows down to show just how irritated he is with dump truck driver.  At this point dump truck driver throws on his brights and then S.O.B. hits his brakes.  They are now right next to me as dump truck driver veers in my lane to avoid hitting S.O.B.  I veer into the lane next to me of course, not wanting to get broad sided by dump truck driver.  I narrowly miss hitting another car that is trying to pass me in the far right lane, obviously not paying attention to what is happening in the other two lanes next to him.

After I recover, I hit the gas and go 85 mph up the hill to get the hell out of the way of these two.  S.O.B., seeing that someone is going faster than him, rides my bumper until I pass a car and move over.  I then go my normal cruising speed (80 mph), meanwhile S.O.B. slows down to 70 mph, going at the same speed as the guy in front of me in the middle lane.  I, of course, end up passing S.O.B. in the far right lane, saying a few choice words regarding S.O.B, some of which revolving around why it should be legal to carry loaded weapons in cars…

The one bright spot that I can take from this incident is that if Darwin’s theory is correct, he won’t be around long (though I am surprised he made it this far in life) – I can only hope he doesn’t take an innocent along with him.

Have a great week!

Stacy