Val’s Rules of the Road

Yesterday on the way back from visiting Mom in the hospital, and a tour of rehab facilities, my sister the ex-mayor’s wife and I took a shortcut through the industrial park. The speed limit is 30 mph, you know. It’s a wandering road, not a straight shot. After rounding the last curve, I heard a siren. Yes. There in my mirror was an emergency vehicle. I signaled and pulled off the road on the right. That’s what you’re supposed to do.

The big dually truck that had been tailgating me did the same. The emergency vehicle passed. I signaled to get back on the road, and pulled out. That dadgummed dually gassed it and tried to pass me! All the way over in the oncoming lane! Can you believe it? That’s not what you’re supposed to do! That behavior is nowhere in the unwritten rules of the road. You don’t jump out like you’re a long-distance runner doing fartlek training, or practicing Indian running. No. You wait your turn and get back on the road in the same order as you pulled off, and accelerate normally to the legal speed limit. Don’t you? Don’t you?

Let the record show that at no time did Val speed up to not let that dually pass, as is the recreational pastime of young hooligans about the Backroads area, going way below the speed limit until the car behind attempts to pass, then taking off so that car must cut in behind them again, at which point they slow down. I have never taken that bait, but I have been behind such a situation on more than one occasion.

So…Mr. Dually once again resumed tailgating me. He turned right onto the main road like me after leaving the industrial park. Then he turned left on the next main thoroughfare when I turned left. Sis said, “If that guy turns onto my road to follow us, DO NOT PULL IN MY DRIVEWAY!”

“Okay. I’ll take him up by the vampire graveyard and loop around to the police station. He’ll like that.”

Such a spoilsport. Mr. Dually did not make the turn onto Sis’s road. So close to having my way with him, then not.