Then the warm front returned.
This morning the weather was freezing. Everything was fine on the way into work. By noon the temperatures had risen over 20 degrees and the sun was shining brightly. Once again, no coats were needed and the birds were singing happily. It felt nice outside. There are blue skies and puffy white clouds overhead. Sexy Olympic women are on the TV wearing body-hugging clothing that shows off every womanly curve as they fly through the air at 90 mph across the snow, demonstrating with their unequaled viewer ratings why the women's NBA will never succeed on its own without blackmailed corporate training wheels unless they change their uniforms to something tighter and sexier that shows the world "sure we can't dunk like the men, but we look good trying."
Sex on ice
Surely this lovely weather will inspire friendliness and peaceably coexisting on the highways, right?
Oh hell no! People are once again raging out there. I had an old fucker in a crimson Chrysler with a "Roll Tide" sticker on the rear window cut me off in the far right-hand lane. I was already going slow, looking for my gym, so I didn't care. But that wasn't what he wanted. No, he WANTED me to care. So he glared at me in his rear view mirror and jumped on his brakes.
Roll Tide and fuck you
Dude, I'm 5 car lengths behind you. I don't give a fuck. Seriously.
I assumed he was looking for his turn. Sure, he didn't turn on a blinker, but you know how people are. Morons never signal. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
He didn't turn.
Once I realized he did that for my benefit I decided to get rid of the shit head in the usual way. I passed him and got back over, now in front of him, but still a good 30 yards ahead. This should be of no concern to him if he's a sane, rational human being.
He came after me.
Realizing that he had hit his brakes purely to fuck with me, and being unaccustomed to being this warm, I got mad. When I saw the turn for my side-street, I put on my blinker, turned onto my dead-end street, and as I drove towards my gym at the end of the road I saluted him.
You know what I mean. I raised my hand inside my car, aimed in his general direction, and I showed him my finger. Yes, yes, I'm fucking 18-years-old today.
Nevertheless, had he been driving along like a normal person, he wouldn't have even seen my salute. He should have been looking at the traffic ahead and all around him, not at some guy driving away down a side street. But if he was an asshat looking for a fight with me then you know all of his attention would be focused on me for daring to pass him and escape. And thus he would have seen my very friendly one-finger salute.
After I saluted him, he whipped his car 90 degrees off the main road and onto the street behind me. I say 'whipped' but keep in mind he was only going 40 mph so it was more of a slow-motion turn. But to him I'm sure it was exciting.
Anyway, he came after me down the dead-end street which he apparently didn't know was a dead-end street. And I continued on to my gym. At the end of the street, I turned into the parking lot of my gym, got out, and stood there waiting for Mr. Asshat to pull in and try to explain to my foot why he felt outraged at me for passing and saluting him.
Once he realized it was a dead-end and we were going to meet, he lost his nerve. He stopped at the entrance to the parking lot and just sat there staring at me. I stood outside my car, holding my gym bag, and invited him to come join me. While this was going on, one of the guys I sometimes work out with, who stands about 6'4" and is rather thick with muscle, came out and walked towards me as he headed to his car.
"Hey Memphis, what's up?" he smiled and asked. He always smiles when he sees me because when we first met I was in the midst of a joke-off and I had told him and everyone else in the gym every single joke I know, with promises that I would be back armed with even more.
"Nothing much," I replied, "just coming for a workout. Hey, watch out for that old man in that Chrysler there. He's got his panties in a wad and he's looking for someone to screw with in traffic," I said pointing to the Crimson Fucker. Apparently the old fart didn't want any attention drawn to him, like most passive/aggressives, because when my friend turned to look at where I was pointing, Crimson Fucker took off.
I say 'took off' but keep in mind he's old so it was like that Toyota sudden acceleration thing where the driver is sort of vaguely aware that they are continuously speeding up without meaning to.
That's Ms. Bitch to you, bucko!
So anyway, after my workout, I showered and headed back. The weather was warmer than ever. The other day, with the first warm front, every single car on the road seemed to be controlled by a raging lunatic. But today is different. Today it is only the passive/aggressives who seem to be still experiencing the madness of wanting to kill every other person on the road including their own grand-kids who just turned 16 and like to drive fast.
I got stuck behind a woman in a gray Chevy pickup truck driving slow in the passing lane. She sat herself beside a gray Toyota Prius and parked there, matching whatever speed the Prius was doing so that they would remain side-by-side and no one could get anywhere. She was also talking on her cell phone as she was doing this. And she had a kid in a child restraint device tied up in the backseat of the extended cab. I was stuck behind her so I waited for her to speed up or get over. In fact, I waited a damn long time. But she was clearly not interested in allowing anyone to get anywhere, so I flashed my brights one time.
"Blah blah blah" she continued talking on her cell phone and ignoring me. I say 'ignoring' but as she was clearly fully aware of the speed the Toyota next to her was going, at least enough to make sure she stayed right next to him, obviously she was aware of what was around her and what she was doing.
So I flashed my brights again. Still no reaction from her. I was waiting a long, long time between flashes just to make sure she had every possible opportunity to not be a cancerous polyp in the ass of traffic. Once it became clear that this was no accident, I flashed several times in a row, and then began considering my horn. Meanwhile, she slowed slightly so that I was suddenly right on her rear bumper. I allowed her to do this and stayed there, close enough that a person sitting on my hood could easily have placed one foot on my bumper and another on hers without pulling a groin muscle or anything.
Hey, if she doesn't love her truck I sure as hell don't care. I've signaled several times, as the law requires, that she's obstructing traffic. If she adds a collision to that I'm willing to involve the police so we can all have a group discussion of the various traffic laws, even the ones concerning how closely you can follow the vehicle in front of you. I find that when it comes right down to it, most passive/aggressive women really love their shiny vehicles and don't actually want them smashed. Men, when they get mad, they're more like "fuck the car, I'm not putting up with that shit!"
Eventually the Toyota realized what was going on and slowed suddenly. I took the resulting opening the instant it appeared and passed her on the right. She, predictably, sped up and came after me.
Here she comes, here comes Speed Racer! She's a demon on wheels ....
Just up the road, cruising along at a speed somewhat faster than she had been going, a police cruiser came up the on-ramp and merged into traffic. And suddenly Chevy Bitch didn't want to play anymore. She slowed down again and resumed her game of blocking the passing lane, confident that the police never enforce the law with regard to obstructing traffic and so she would be safe even with the presence of the cop. I continued on my way, exiting the highway and merging onto the interstate.
Instantly I encountered more passive/aggressives. But I had 6 lanes to work with so I quickly left most of them behind.
Then I encountered Mr. Dodge Minivan. I was coming up behind an 18-wheeler and needed to get over one lane to the right. Mr. Dodge was back well behind me, in the lane I was moving into. As soon as he saw me coming over he gunned his minivan and blocked me out. Not only did he block me out, but he remained there, making sure that I never got over.
Mr. Dodge Minivan
I was forced to pass the 18-wheeler on the left and then come over 3 lanes in order to get where I intended to be, which put me smack in front of Mr. Assdodge Minivan anyway, much to his apparent surprise and dismay.
I drove on aways, thinking about the utter pointlessness of what he'd done in blocking me out and nearly hitting me. And then I decided I was mad.
I took my foot off the gas and slowed down to let him catch up. He didn't want to catch up, so he took his foot off the gas and slowed down, too.
We did this for awhile. Normally this would be a problem on an interstate where the speed limit is 70 mph, but this town is Passive/Aggressive Hell, so no one thought anything of it. People went around us at 65, 60 and sometimes 55 mph, totally unconcerned with how slow any of us were going. We slowed to 50 and still he would not come near me. So I hit my brakes to slow enough that I could change lanes further to the right by passing behind the car next to me and moved over towards the exit ramp.
Mr. AssDodge, seeing me exiting, regained his manhood, such as it is, and began to speed back up again. But it was a long way to my off-ramp and he ended up next to me for a moment before he realized it. I looked long and hard at him. He stared straight ahead, dressed in his powder blue plaid button-down shirt and khaki pants, gray hair parted lamely on the side like something out of Revenge of the Nerds, refusing to even glance my way for fear that eye contact might make him instantly pee his pants.
I didn't salute him. I didn't honk. I didn't do or say anything. I just thought about the lessons that 15 years of living in Memphis, Tennessee, have taught me. White people really are a bunch of chickenshit cowards. I guess I understand now what my black friends have been trying to tell me. All he had to do was just make eye contact like a man. Sure, he was wrong, but he could look me in the eye and show me that wrong or not, he still had balls.
But he didn't have any balls. That's why he got stuck driving the Dodge minivan while his wife is probably driving the Hemi Charger.
Honey, you're not man enough for that car
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