Sunday, December 11, 2016

Road Rules 101

I was driving west up the main road about to turn right into my street. Up the hill, away from the main intersection. The traffic was heavy, yes it was. As I headed up the hill approaching my street, I looked up and saw a black Mazda 2, which was going to cross the main road from right to left, in front of me. It lurched out from the right, blocking the lane of on-coming traffic, one of my pet hates, I have to admit. As the law states, do not enter an intersection, if you can't clear it. There was a car in front of me, which the Mazda 2 had to wait for, and then there was me, coming up the hill. And just as the Mazda 2 blocked the on-coming cars, and the car in front passed by, I pulled up in front of her, blocking her way.

So there we were, I was blocking the Mazda 2 and she was blocking the silver 4WD coming down the road towards me and the silver 4WD was blocking me from turning and she had a car right behind her, so she couldn't back up, as did I. None of us could move, except for the Mazda 2. Stuck in a three way gridlock.

The millennial driving the Mazda 2 looked aghast. She put her hands in the air as if to say to me, What are you doing? I stared her down, as I had the right of way. She just sat there pointing across the top of her steering wheel, repeatedly, with both hands saying she wanted to go straight across, gesticulating that I was in her way.

She didn't attempt to back up, she just sat there, presumably, trying to will me out of the way, looking outraged.

Funny how people with car licences so often don't know the basic road rules.
I looked at her, she looked at me defiantly. 
I waited patiently for her to give in and back up, but she clearly wasn't going to. I knew damn well that I wasn't moving. The traffic was now banking up behind me and the traffic was banking up behind the silver 4WD in long lines.

I waited and waited, but she wasn't moving. Some thing had to be said. My window was open so I said, loudly, “Back up!”

She pointed across her steering wheel again with both hands, with that amazed look of the young, perhaps 21, and the stupid which said, I don’t know why you are doing this to me.

I'd given her a pointer and she chose to ignore me, clearly subtleties weren't going to work with her, so I said loudly, “Get out off the way.”

She pointed across her steering wheel again, aghast that she wasn’t being allowed to do what she wanted.

“Get off the road, you idiot!”

Finally it sank in that I wasn’t moving and that she would, in fact, have to move. She looked like she was holding her breath, I waited for her head to explode. I was hoping her head would explode, like the scene out of Pulp Fiction. Bang! All over the inside of the windscreen like a red sun set. The ensuing chaos would have been worth it. And finally, she started looking in her rear vision mirror, looking some what harassed, put out, you may even say. And she backed up.

The silver 4WD waved me around, but I waved her through as it was her right of way... and I didn't want the long line of cars behind me to clear quite so quickly. Our open windows aligned and she said, “Unbelievable.” And then she was gone. But she bore such a striking resemblance to a friend of mine that I was momentarily bamboozled, left wondering if, in fact, it was my friend Amy.


I waited for the long line of on-coming traffic to clear before I could make my turn, by which time the was an enormous amount of traffic behind me. Miss Mazda 2 wouldn't look at me as we sat waiting to make our moves. I gazed at her, but her eyes were fixed on the traffic behind me, the expression on her face was sour. I'm guessing she was there for quite some time while the traffic jam she had caused cleared.

I'm guessing she learnt nothing. I'm guessing she blamed it all on me. I could just see she was the type, you know, no life experience, deluded with entitlement. But, you know what, I didn't care, that fact that she was going to be there for quite some time was satisfying enough.

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