Thursday Story

Every now and then I write a story for my girl friends and e-mail it off. Most often they are titled Monday stories since things always happen on the weekends, sometimes though it could be a Wednesday story. It's usually something funny that's happened in my life and they get a good kick out of it. I thought I would start the same thing here, especially since NaBloPoMO is racing it's way towards me and I am terrified of the commitment I've jumped into.

Welcome to today's story.

Now as I mentioned above usually the stories involve something funny that's happened, or in some cases really gross but turns funny after I've had some time to let the grossness of it all pass (I'll write the cockroach story sometime soon, that was the first story and still holds the ranking as the best.ever.story.) This story however, is not funny at all, unless you count how sad the behavior of some people as funny.

My drive to work usually takes about 15-20 minutes depending on what time I leave and how much traffic there is. I travel on a four lane hwy that is really the only good way into town unless I want to drive WAY out of my way to take the "freeway". The "freeway" is a hwy but with only one stop light between me and the exit I would take. So I take the always-under-construction-death-trap hwy.

There is one point that the right hand lane is always the slowest and it happens to be at a light. There is usually a large truck or a lot of traffic in that lane so I always move over, just like I did this morning. There was a car in front of where I wanted to be and a car behind where I wanted to be, so I took the opportunity to move. Apparently I was a little too close to the car behind me. I didn't think I was and the person didn't honk so I thought I was good. Until the car sat on my bumper. So I moved when I got past the large tanker in the right lane thinking the car would pass and flip me off if it was so inclined. Here is where I was wrong.

The car immediately and rather scarily(is that a word?) swerved right behind me and again decided to make it's home on my bumper. Had they been any closer I could have had my morning coffee with them. I decided I didn't want to play the road rage game and noticed that about 200 yards ahead was a red light. So I did what any normal human would do and gently tapped my brakes. And by gently I mean I brake checked the punk. It was an ACCIDENT (not the brake check, that was on purpose). I didn't mean to cut raging maniac off. Raging Maniac, or RM as they shall be known from this point on, almost REAR ENDED ME. Now, it wasn't a break check that would have been say, my fault if RM had really rear ended me, just enough to let them know enough was enough.

So, RM swerved to miss me, cut me off, then realized that they should have been looking at the road in front of them, oh dear, traffic had stopped. So RM swerved again into the left lane. I stayed right where I was. For the next four miles RM tried so hard to cut me off, but it wasn't working. There was too much traffic and finally some very large Dodge Ram saw what was going on and blocked RM so they couldn't get to me. I continued on my merry way thinking all was done and peaceful. But just as a precaution I turned on my cell to get ready to dial 911 in case RM decided to come back. And I wasn't disappointed.

I had turned onto my street with nary a sign of RM in the rear view mirror. I thought, foolishly, that they had decided to return to reality and just go to work. Seriously, it was AN ACCIDENT! It happened, get over it. So I'm in the left lane, phone in hand and who do I see zooming into my view?? No guesses? Ok, it was RM! But RM was getting into the right turn lane, getting ready to turn right, right? Oh no, the light turns green and I go forward, the car next to me goes forward and RM promptly cuts off the poor car in the right lane that has no idea what in the heck is going on. So I dial 911, but can't get a good read on the license plate. Just that it's a silver Chrysler Pacifica with an unidentifiable driver. Now my heart is pounding (it's pounding while writing this and it happened over an hour ago) and I'm shaking(I'm still doing that too). I don't want to die, I still have so many things to do!! And since you just don't know what crazy people are capable of, I didn't look at RM when we cam to a red light and we were finally side by side.

And RM started, just now STARTED honking at me. Good grief, don't you think that would have been the right thing to do 7.MILES.AGO?!?! So I hung up before the 911 operator could answer and turned AWAY from the maniac. I pulled into my parking lot and sat there, shaking and watching to make sure RM didn't decide to turn around and put a cap in me (I like saying put a cap in me even though I am the WHITEST girl you have ever met, it's fun). I got into my building and stood at the top floor window watching to make sure RM didn't come back to hurt my car. Good thing every 2 out of 5 cars in this town are identical to mine. Except maybe I'm the only one with a Sheriff's sticker on the car. I might need to remove that.

So that is the introduction to the story of the day. I hope you liked it, now I have to figure out how to transfer this to e-mail without re-writing it or linking to my blog. They don't know about the blog!