Never Drive Interstates Unless You Have Maturity

There's a fairly good driving pet peeve that drives 50% of us nutso. I was motoring home  to Dublin, ohiofrom my cousins in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin last Tuesday, cruising south on Interstate I-65. "Wow", I thought, "This is smooth sailing". We were cruising along between 75-80 mph. I always say go with the flow.

Somewhere around Lafayette the traffic came to a dead stop. Now, I'm always one to give drivers the benefit of the doubt. My first inclination was, I'd bet there's an accident. I was considering the fact that bodies were limbless and lying along the roadside. I keep a mini-rosary in my door side compartment for these events and ran off one Our Father and ten Hail Mary's.

Traffic crawled and stopped, crawled and stopped, then it halted for a good twenty minutes. Once again I told myself this was serious. But, I've been in these situations a hundred of times. You see, I'm a pessimist and know that drivers are, how can I say this with kindness? Well, they happen to be irresponsible, self-centered dorks.

In the course of thirty minutes all traffic, both lanes of it, drove exactly one mile. Finally, I saw it. A flashing yellow arrow pointing to the left as in, all traffic merge right so I did. But, it seems 50% of all interstate drivers don't think this arrow applies to them. They'll keep on cruising along in the left hand lane to drive as far as they are able and then try and sneak into our lane, the one law abiding citizens take immediately. What this creates is called a bottle neck but it doesn't apply to the lawbreakers because they happen to be the important people who could give a flying crap about the rest of us losers.

I have a serious problem with these nobs. Giving the finger does absolutely no good. They don't care as long as long as they can get where there going without inconvenience to themselves. Many are the times when I have placed my Ford Taurus X in the left lane to stop these Neanderthal morons. It doesn't work. They'll fly around me on the grass side. It is illegal to fling a Coke bottle at them, right?

Finally, a semi will pull out in the lefty lane and do what I had intended.

As for I-65 on this occasion, and this is the honest to God's truth, the left lane was closed down for the length of four orange cones, approximately forty feet.

This entire scenario took, all three miles of it, forty-five minutes. Here's the truth. Not once did I swear. At no time did I scream inside or outside of the car window. I was calm, cool and collected. I do believe, after seventy years, I've finally developed a modicum of maturity.