Good Morning America

Already not feeling particularly birthdayy, this is how my morning starts.

I was driving into work trying to grab what bit of happiness I could by listening to Christian McBride swing the hell out "Bye Bye Blackbird." I turned onto Weaver Dairy Road when soon I saw my rearview mirror filled with the grill of a large pickup truck. I glanced down at my speedometer wondering if I got a little too lost in the music. No, I was going 40 in a 35 mph zone that's notorious for being a speed trap.

Then, incredibly, the guy honks his horn and does a "moving along" waving motion with his hand, flicking the back of his hand up in my direction. It wasn't one of those leaning on the horn, desperate beeps. There was no frantic waving of the arms. Just to be sure, I looked again to make sure he wasn't doing the "this is an emergency" flashing headlight thing. No. He was just being an asshole.

And I know this is just me, but assholes in oversized pickup trucks are like double-assholes. They're not only assholes for whatever asshole thing they just did to earn that designation, they're assholes for purchasing that monstrosity which wasting critical fading resources and hurts everyone's personal economy, especially the poor, by driving up fuel prices, and contributes to the evil Big Oil companies that lead to disastrous wars in the Middle East which take the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. So, now not only are you an asshole, but you're an asshole on a global level.

I considered slowing down to say 30, maybe 25, but, "No," I thought, "it's my birthday, I'm just going to chill, drive 35 (no tickets on my birthday, please), and let him deal with having to live with law abiding citizens not interested in catering to his inability to plan a damn morning commute."

I told myself, "I will not give him the finger," and began to feel better already. Dude, I'm like fucking Ghandi. I figured he'd accept that for a half mile - all that's left to go on Weaver Dairy at this point - he'll have to drive the posted speed limit, and ease back to a safer distance. Again, no. He stayed right on my tail and continued exaggerated pantomimes of exasperation.

I told myself, "I will not get out of my car and beat his ass," and breathe and feel better. Zen-fucking-master.

Unable to get me to recognize he's godallfuckingmighty (as evidenced by his godallfuckingmightymobile), he got fed up and passed me - on a two lane road with double lines and oncoming traffic and about 500 feet from a traffic light (yeah, you just risked lives to save yourself two seconds. nice). He just narrowly made it back in front of me (and behind another car going about 37) without hitting the smaller car coming the other way. Now, I did speed up a little when I saw him trying to pass because I'm a bitter vindictive jerk, but that's not the point.

So now he's thrice an asshole: once for the condescending horn-blowing, hurry-up for no reason thing; twice for the whole killing innocent civilians thing; and three times for making me wish him serious bodily injury when he fucking crashes in one of his stress-filled king-o-the-road stunts. I don't like wishing ill on a fellow human being, but he left me no choice.

Asshole.