Bordering on complete sanity: Lame-ass drivers and big-ass trucks

By Sandy Compton

Reader Columnist

This is for those who drive too close, too fast and too irresponsibly to deserve a driver’s license. When you bought the car (or your parents did to get you out of the house), you didn’t buy the road, too—though you act like you own it. And acting like you own it makes you a dumb-ass driver. Or should I say, “lame-ass driver.” Some of you can probably speak.

If you don’t understand that, I won’t be surprised.

When you blast up behind me when I’m already at the speed limit, hover 20 feet off my bumper until traffic (barely) clears and then pass on a double yellow line, my middle finger glues itself—of its own accord—against the driver’s side window as you go by. Consider that finger a big san serif capital “I.” It stands for “Idiot!”

You are acting like an idiot. Double negative points if you are driving a $50,000 2500 HD, four-wheel-drive, gas-guzzling, wallet-emptying status symbol with a hood higher than the top of my car.

Not everyone driving a big-ass truck is a lame-ass driver. But when some of you climb into your overpriced, overweight, jacked-up chunk of glitzy metal, your brain ceases to function. Or your personality changes from mild-mannered whatever to total jerk bully. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with gender, either.

Do you think that you are entitled to that truck? Do you think that while you are in it, you are entitled to act any way you want? If you act the way you act on the road while pushing a cart through the supermarket, you’ll get punched in the face. Hard.

Maybe that’s why my middle finger plasters itself against the window. I’m just leading with my left.

I often feel bad after I flip you the “I.” I tell myself not to act that way, to be kinder, to be less temper-ridden. But, if you stay in sight long enough (as if I can keep up with you, even if I want to), I nearly invariably witness you doing something else that justifies my initial opinion.

No matter what you’re driving, you should develop the intelligence to stay far enough behind me that you can see my license plate over your hood. If you are less than 30 feet behind me at 70 mph, and I touch my brakes—just touch ‘em—it’s going to loosen your bowels a bit. If I have to really get on the binders—for a deer, a dog, a skunk or some other unplanned event—your shiny ride is going try to drive up my tailpipe, and your life and mine are going to change, perhaps irrevocably. And it’s going to be your fault. Even worse: you are going to be responsible. Not that you seem to be any good at it, judging by the way you drive.

Even if we’re both lucky, you will become intimately acquainted with my insurance company when they come after you for wrecking my car. And you won’t like what your insurance company has to say, either. When the investigating officer cites you for reckless driving—I’m going to stand witness to that—your rates are going through the ceiling.

If we’re both lucky.

It can only get worse from there. If you kill yourself, that’s one thing. By the way you drive, you seem to have a death wish. But if you kill me or somebody else, before it’s all over, you’re going to wish you were dead.

Sandy was angry when he wrote this, and tried to stay that way long enough to finish the piece. You can read more of his stuff at www.bluecreekpress.com/whats-up/