Garbage In the Streets

I think you'll enjoy this.

I was driving down W. Manlius Street in Eastwood to buy a shower curtain. I was pretty much the only one on the road and was enjoying the sights of laundromats, townie bars and gas stations, footloose and fancy-free at 30 mph. I had a joyous, relaxing day off from work today and got quite a bit done -- although it turns out not as much as I had wanted to, although I will definitely get to it later.

Just when I thought my trek couldn't be more carefree or unobstructed, my number one pet peeve occurred: being cut off. I am not what you call a "reckless" driver; I drive with the utmost amount of reck you would find. But I am an impatient and aggressive driver. I don't like being slowed down because of some schmuck who doesn't know the rules of the road. I am well-known in my small circle of friends for "clearing the lane" on the I-90 Thruway; that is, tailgating cars in the left-hand lane to get them to move their asses to the right-hand lane so the rest of us who are actually driving OVER 70 mph can get to where we are going in a decent amount of time. Oddly, I find that the left-lane traffic is far worse going West (toward Rochester/Buffalo) than it is going east (to Utica/Albany).

Anyhoo, I thought I was going to be able to get to a main intersection unabated, when up ahead and to the left, I could see the ass-end of a truck, backing out of some townie bar parking lot and into the main road. There was no other traffic coming from either direction, except me to hinder his progress, so apparently he figured it was okay to just back directly into the road, forcing me to slow down and/or stop.

Usually, when I am backing into a road like this, I tend to do it expeditiously, often shifting from "reverse" to "drive" in a quick manner, often doing a mini peel-out to show that I meant no harm. The driver of this particular piece-of-shit cobalt blue truck, however, had no such designs on putting up a guise of traffic etiquette. Instead, he slowed it down to an almost complete stop, keeping his white reverse lights on for a few extra seconds, until finally putting his car into drive and going on his merry way.

Of course, I could never just let something like that go, so I purposely sped up to get very close to right behind him, and made a grand gesture of stopping abruptly, to show that he had indeed slowed me down. Then something puzzling happened...

Before I get to that part, let me quickly describe the couple sitting in the cab of the truck. The husband, probably about 5'8", wearing a baseball cap that probably has the number "3" with a halo around it, with a white tank top. The wife, probably about 5'10", hair in a bun, pink tank top, about 260 lbs. She looked like Chris Farley with a red wig. I put her odds of owning a yellow banana clip at 16-1.

Anyway, keep in mind, I never honked, never shook my fist out the window, never flashed my lights. I think the only thing I did was shake my head in tsk-tsking disapproval.

Suddenly, I see the wife/girlfriend/food-tester slide open the dual windows in the back of the cab. (You know the kind I mean, the two windows that look like a sliding glass door. I'm sure there's a name for it, but maybe it's just "sliding windows." And now, back to the countdown.) I also see the male driver adjust his rear-view window, maybe so he can look at me better.

The female proceeds to turn her body so that she is sitting sideways in the cab, and looks backward out the window for me. She then puts her arm out, as if she is putting it around her miserable boyfriend's shoulder, but with her hand hanging out of the back of the window. I found this curious, but hey, maybe some people have odd ways of being comfortable.

Out of nowhere, this woman flips me off. Stares out that window and flips me off! I showed a remarkable amount of restraint, I felt, in not honking, or even flashing my lights at these inbreds even though they were driving 20-25 mph after they cut in front of me. Yet, this Mindy Cohn look-alike has the gall to shoot her fat little hamhock-like mitt out the window and shoot me the bird? I think I actually said to myself aloud, "Did she just fuckin flip me off?" And I didn't even say it mad, I said it in the same way someone would say, "Do you know if we have any cereal?"

Nothing really happened after that, unfortunately, other than the fact that as soon as the single-lane road split off into two lanes, I sped off at a tremendous speed. I could have thrown the middle finger out the window myself or yelled "have another dooonut ya fat fuckin pig!" But I didn't. I went back to my satifsying life, where I am fulfilled by friends, learning, good books, crossword puzzles, films, great beer and music. They went back to their Dale, Sr. shrine and talked about how much they hate blacks. That's enough for me.