The other day I was travelling from my hometown of Sapulpa, to take my son’s car to a mechanic we use in Oklahoma City. Micah’s car was in desperate need of some front end work, and when we’d drive it, it would bounce us all over the road.
As I was driving towards my destination, I found myself in the passing lane doing eighty miles per hour. (At eighty the car didn’t bounce nearly as bad.) I was boxed in on the right, front and rear by other vehicles travelling the road with me. We were this way for about five minutes, and there was absolutely nothing I could have done to get out of the passing lane except reduced my speed to fifty to try and get in the right hand lane and extricate myself out of the way of the guy riding my bumper.
Finally the traffic started to ease up and I was finally in a position to move my car to the right hand lane, when out of nowhere the guy who had been on my tail soared past me. It wasn’t until the back tires of his car were in line with my front tires that I realized he was flipping me off. Immediately something went off in my and the thought came to my mind to change lanes right then and push his car into a tail spin.
Whoa! What’s that all about? Where did that come from? I quickly realized that as not a viable option, and began to think things like, “Hey, that guy thinks I’m number one!” or “Oh look, he’s telling me his I.Q.!” I was really surprised at his reaction to me being in the passing lane and not moving over. I mean, I couldn’t, there was no way for me to. I wondered how worked up he had gotten while trying to get around me. (I truthfully wondered if he got as worked up as I have in the past when in traffic.) Had he flown off the handle and called me names too? How high was his blood pressure now?
It was about two minutes later that the traffic ahead of my new found friend began to slow again because two semi-trucks were driving neck and neck; one in the right hand lane, the other in the left. Well as luck would have it, the semi in the right hand lane was moving faster than the one in the left and I was in position to pull ahead of that other guy. So what does he do? He pulls in front of me blocking me from passing him.
I thought, okay and changed lanes moving into the passing lane again. I really am glad that guy had no heart problems because I’m pretty sure that he would have stroked out with his need to stay in front of me as he pulled back into the passing lane. He must have thought he was Mario Andretti I guess, and in the race of his lifetime.
I lost interest with him and backed off deciding I’d had enough fun for one day. I did think about this for a while as the highway passed beneath me. My greatest thought was, “You’re a pretty big man when you can drive past someone and not actually have to confront them personally.” I mean, if we’d been in a mall and a similar situation had arisen, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have chosen to flip me off.
I’ve been accused of having bouts of road rage in the past, mainly by my wife and daughter, and there may be an element of truth in what they say. But this incident and the rage that rose up in me at first has got me to rethinking what I do and say when I’m driving in traffic now. I mean, come on I'm a nice guy and still he flipped me off. Well, there’s that…get ‘em up folks, we need to go out and whip something for the Kingdom…and I don’t mean whip out your middle finger in traffic….
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