Friday, August 29, 2003

Here’s the deal, gentle reader. I turn right from Sheridan onto Main this afternoon and I stop mid-turn because a truck is just sitting in the street, emergency lights flashing as if they actually mean something. With other weary commuters piling up behind me, I give a perfunctory honk, at which point the bastard truck driver walks over and gets all “traffic cop” in my face.

So he’s waving me over to the other lane–you know, the one that kinda contains ONCOMING traffic and a lot of it–and I’m throwing my hands up in the air and silently mouthing, “What the f*ck?” He gets impatient, the flabby, florid man, and beckons to me to pull up. The lady in the oncoming lane isn’t too thrilled as my bumper edges within an inch or two of her driver’s side door, so I start backing up, which obviously runs counter to Mr. Florid’s wishes. Up come his two fat arms again as he waves me forward angrily, so I humor him, but not before indicating that my sideview mirror would, oh, hit his BIG FAT TRUCK.

This apparently doesn’t register in his brain (maybe I should’ve strung some Ho-Ho’s from my mirror) until my mirror almost hits his truck, which prompts him to articulate in a moment of epiphany, “NONONO,” and point at my mirror. Thanks, Mr. Florid. You deserve a cookie. Or two. Or FIVE.

So this little drama repeats itself, I’m going backwards and forwards as if it were my hobby, and then we all have a good laugh. By “we all have,” I mean “I have” as the Evanston police zoom in to deliver his “deliveries in rear” ass off the road.

Well, that was therapeutic. My weekend is off to a great start! Now enough about road rage–let’s talk about road rage.