Every car driver is allowed to declare one day a week as, “Asshole Day”, when the flowers bloom, the sun shines, and idiots take to the streets in droves with the sole purposes of annoying, frustrating, and/or scaring the hell out of you.
Guess what today is?
I shot to Hampton today over my lunch hour so I could pick up a present for my wife, a set of personalized license plates for her car that read, “IMAUSIE”. They finally came in although I ordered them ages ago when I renewed both cars’ registrations, but since you have to take in the old plates to get the new ones, I headed in to the courthouse to exchange.
The ride INTO Hampton was pretty nice, and the service at the courthouse was fast and friendly and, despite the long line at Subway, I still got a sandwich in a reasonable amount of time and back on the road. But that’s when the sky clouded over.
The first asshole was the truck with two men gawking at Hampton. Now, being a small town of about 4,500 people, Hampton isn’t all that impressive, but these two yokos were driving down one of the two major highways at 15mph, pointing at things along the side of the road, and slowing down to see such landmarks better! And this wasn’t just for a monument or a big huge building, they hit the brakes in front of a gas station and pointed at it! I was the third car behind them and there was at least another 3 behind me, all in a line. Since it’s an in-town highway, there’s not much passing opportunities, but the car immediately behind him chanced it anyway and zizzed around the truck in a no-passing zone over a railroad track. I could have screamed.
So these yayhoos continued their leisurely pace all the way out till about 1/4 mile past the 55mph sign headed out of town and then pulled over into a farm driveway to gawk some more. This display of idiocy earned them a snappy shot from the birdie-gun as I finally got around them.
Only two miles later I came up behind my second Emmy award winning driver, the one breaking the camel’s back and declaring today to be Asshole Day. This little red import was weaving back and forth across her lane, not really picking any one side or the other to stay with, but playing the entire field. Oh, and she was zipping along at 50mph.
Highway 65 from Hampton to Sheffield is terribly hilly, a feature that I believe they should have corrected when they re-did the pavement 10 years ago, but they took the lazy route. You know the DOT — hard-workin’ bunch there, eh? So after another 4 miles, I finally find a strip long enough to pass and…
The girl driving has hair from the 80s, I shit you not. Big, boofy hair. Think Flashdance on crack. And she’s snapping gum. And she’s gazing somewhere in the vicinity of either her crotch or the transmission, I’m not sure which as *my* eyes only left the road for a split second whereas hers may have never seen one before in her life. She may have been rebuilding the gearbox on the fly; you never know with these midwestern gals. But in all likelihood she had dropped her lit cigarette and was trying to fish it out of her sixer of Schlitt’s.
Having passed this gem of a human, the rest of my ride back home was rather uneventful. But clearly the idiots are out on the highways today, so for the love of Peter, Paul, and Mary, keep your eyes peeled and your foot on the brake — you never know what they might come up with next.
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