YOU IN A HEAP OF TROUBLE, BOY!

 YOU IN A HEAP O' TROUBLE, BOY!

May 13, 2014

I lived in the city of L.,  for about a year and half. I enjoyed almost every minute of it. It was a good time in my life, I must say.

The only thing I absolutely detested about the place was the way they drove. I mean, I'm going down an avenue at a respectable 35 mph and I see somebody about 2 blocks away stopped, wanting to turn into the street in front of me, but waiting politely, I thought, until I passed. Then, when I'm almost at the intersection, they start up, and swerve into my lane, causing me to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting them!! It happened all the time - only in that town and nowhere else. What's up with that??!!

I worked in the nearby town of S. ,  Once it's own community, it had almost become totally absorbed within the greater metropolitan area. To get to S. from my house was easy. I lived just off W. St. and that was an avenue, running for quite a ways down to another main street. There it narrowed to a skinny, narrow 2-way rural road.

I noticed that, every day, as I went to work, when I'd arrive at the place where W. St. narrowed, sure enough some nut-job in the other lane would take off like a racehorse at the post, jam in front of me - almost clipping my front bumper, and then SLOW DOWN to a snail's pace! The speed limit was 50 and they'd go sometimes 30 miles per hour, ...and I wanted to go 75!

"WTF?!?!"  I'd say out loud, every time some joker would do that. I knew just what to expect: the flow was TOWARD town, so there was almost never a chance to pass the guy who was in so much of a hurry that he couldn't let me by.

That began to irritate me no end! I never listened to those who say "Don't sweat the small stuff!" My answer has always been that if it wasn't for a single irritating grain of sand, an oyster would never make a pearl. This doesn't satisfy many people, but I thought it was cleaver.

On this one particular day, I left for work as usual. I wasn't in a hurry at all. I got to the place where the road narrows and saw, out of the corner of my eye, another car, rearing to burn rubber, jam in front of me, and then jam on his brakes. I called those people slamma-jammas.

I thought to myself: "Not today, Jack, not today!" and with that, as soon as the light turned green, both of us took off like jackrabbits.

AND THEY'RE OFF!!

Well, this time I made it to the two-lane first, and was pretty happy with myself, and looked back in the rear-view mirror. But the man did not slow down like all the others. Instead, he was riding my rear bumper!


"Eat my dust, Jack!" I said to myself, flooring it. I really don't know how fast I got up to, but the doggone guy was still sticking to my bumper like white sticks to rice.

I looked again in my rear-view mirrow, and it was at this instant that I noticed there was a red light on his dashboard, and that little red light was blinking!!

I swallowed hard, and pulled over, expecting the worst.

I got out and the man tells me to put my hands of the hood of the car and spread my legs. This was not going to be a good day. I did as he requested. He called in the incident, and then told me to call the station - that he had someplace to go and couldn't fool with me right then.

I got to the office, frazzled. I closed the door, had a tall drink of water, and tried to calm down. But there was that phone call I had to make...

I picked up the phone and talked to this lady, who says: "Man, you're in a lot of trouble, yeah!"

"I know Madamme." How bad it is?" I asked, fearing some terrible punishment awaited me.

She says: "It's three hunderd dollar fine..." (OUCH!! THAT HURT!! There wasn't a damned thing FINE about that!) "and," she continued, "a manditory JAIL sentence..."

I nearly broke down with that news. "I can't go to jail!" I pleaded, as if all the other fellows caught by the police COULD go to jail....

"Well," she suggested, "you could talk to the D.A."

So I went down to the D.A. and told him the story, and he laughed so hard (but I wasn't laughing). "OK, tell you what, you just pay the fine, and we'll let it go at that," he said, after his laughter subsided. I went to the window and paid the fine.

Now came the hard part: I had to go home and tell my wife that I just got a $300.00 ticket, and explain to her HOW I got it!!! Was I ever in a HEAP o' trouble!!!