Wednesday, September 07, 2005

That was... different...

There's a street near my parent's house, Wilmington Avenue, which has three lanes at an intersection near the freeway. The rightmost lane has to turn right, so the middle lane is the one you want to be in to get into the right lane after the intersection, to get on the freeway. Getting on the freeway is popular there (especially with trucks -- Wilmington is a harbor city), so the middle lane gets a bit backed up in the afternoons. People tend to get into the right lane before the right lane even properly exists if they want to turn right at the intersection, so as to avoid Middle Lane Congestion.

That's normal. What is not normal is when a big truck decides he doesn't want to be in the right lane after all, and he starts edging into Your Space. That's what happened today. I was towards the front of the truck, and I sort of looked at him disbelievingly and kept going at first. Then we all stopped for the red light. The truck continued to edge over, this time into the foot or two of space in between me and the truck in front of me. I looked at him incredulously. I can understand a little car sticking his nose in to force his way into the lane, but there was no way that big rig was ever going to fit. I stayed where I was. The truck honked at me. I looked at him again, and said something like, "What the heck are you doing?!" The driver then gestured at me to change lanes. I said, "I want to be in this lane, sir, I don't want to change lanes!" (I can be very polite when I'm mad) and I changed lanes. He was a lot bigger than I was, so it seemed the thing to do. I was able to get on the freeway still, no thanks to him. I just had to cut in line to do it.

I guess there's a first time for everything, even being very purposefully forced out of your lane by a big rig...

3 comments :

luminarumbra said...

Ok, here's what you're gonna do....

You're gonna go into the 'settings' menu for your blog. Then you're gonna select the 'comments' tab. Find the option that asks for word verification for comments, and select yes. All us real people won't mind typing the extra word. =)

And that truck driver needs a good talking to by his momma.

Marcy said...

Yes I am. Sheesh.

Marcy said...

Oh, and yes, he does. And maybe his daddy, too. Dads should be more involved in these things.