Sunday, November 26, 2006

Karma is a bitch!

Last week it rained really hard here in D.C. So hard in fact, that many roads were washed out and dozens of car crashes occurred. Stuff like that is pretty typical in the city with the second or third worse traffic in the country. Most of the time everybody is just on the edge of getting into accidents, saved by the grace of God, or by the skin of their teeth. It’s pretty amazing we aren’t all dead yet.

I had the need to drive in this most foul and horrendous weather last week. I was on my way to visit my most sainted and elderly grandmother in the old folks home. I was to bring her cookies and sing folk songs to all of those wonderful octogenarians who resided there. Their own families couldn’t always make it out there to visit their parents and grandparents often enough, so I liked to fill that void of love by visiting and listening to all their exiting and interesting stories. My grandmother had the best.

It was rough going that day my friends. The weather started getting rough, my tiny car was tossed. It took all of my cunning and skills to keep my car (name: Keep Getting Caught, interesting story there, but that’s for another time) from skidding off the road and ending up overturned, trapping me in a ditch where I would slowly and painfully suffer and die. I wasn’t digging too much on that idea, so I kept my speed slow to ensure my getting there safely to bring joy and happiness to the old people without whom America would not be the great country it is today.

As I came closer to the nursing home, a car appeared in my rear view mirror. It had no headlights on and was driving a little too quickly for my taste. As it closed in on me I saw just how erratically the car was swerving. I got nervous, so I pulled over to the next lane, just to get out of this cat’s way. It didn’t work.

He must have been going to the same place as me, (maybe he had a booty call at the nursing home. I dunno, who am I to judge?) because he made all the same moves I did. Finally I got an idea. I decided to slow down enough to piss this guy off (who was obviously in a rush) so that he’d go into another lane. Dynamite idea, right? Sho nuff!

I slowed down. The speed limit was 45 mphs, I was going 20. There’s no way somebody going so fast would tolerate such a slow driver in front of them. And I was right, after a minute of his brights blinding me and his horn making me deaf, he pulled over into the other lane. I thought I was safe. But there was something I didn’t notice: He didn’t speed up to pass me.

A minute went by; I figured that everything was gravy, so I started to increase my speed. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the car speeds by me and immediately swerves into my lane! The bastard cut me off! I wasn’t ready for that maneuver and was caught by surprise. I jammed my foot on the break, and tried to keep the car from spinning out of control. I barely managed to maintain. Furious at his insane behavior I kept driving. Slowly my heart rate went down until I could drive without seeing red in front of my eyes.

Then it happened.

Like a flash, the car, (which was a hundred yards in front of me) went too fast on a turn and hit a concrete embankment. It flipped, it caught fire. It was brutal looking. I slowed as I came near. No other cars were in sight. I rushed from K.G.C. to see what had happened to the driver. Smoke filled my lungs and stung my eyes until there were tears. I coughed and blindly made my way to the overturned driver’s portion. Then I saw him and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

His head was a mass of cuts, shards of glass from the window were embedded in the skin of his face. Parts of his scalp hung loosely from the top of his head in flaps. The bone from his right arm jutted gruesomely from the soft pulpy flesh of his forearm. His legs lay in unnatural positions, one behind his head, one in front of his face. Had he the ability to move his body, he could have kissed his own shin. By the way he was sitting I knew that most, if not all, of his ribs were broken.

I braved the heat and the disgusting sight until I was close enough to see him, to touch him. Then, as his eyes opened and focused in on my approach, I knelt down in front of him.

And punched that asshole right in the face.

“That’s what you get for cutting me off you bitch!”

The moral of this story? If you cut me off in traffic you are going to die. Pretty simple and straight-forward moral I think.

(This story brought to you by the Van Munchausen Board. Have you had your Munchausen today?)

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