SO, I’m headed to the store earlier today. Traffic is light and I’m on a four lane street headed for a traffic light. There is a car (a late 90’s Mustang) in the other lane and my lane is empty. The light is red so I begin to slow down. At the last second, the light turns green, so I pick up speed again and zip past the Mustang. I glance in my rear viiew mirror and see the Mustang rapidly gaining on me. As the Mustang comes up even to me, the driver (probably 17-18) looks at me and (insert diety of your choice) as my witness, looks at me and gives me the heavy metal salute (the “devil hand” often seen at Ozzy concerts), sticks his tongue all the way out at me! His buddy (probably about the same age), in the passenger seat, pumps his arm and makes what appears to be “woo-hoo” noises. The two then speed away.
I can imagine their story later on in the evening:
“Yeah, man, this dood in an Escort station wagon tries to blow me off the road, but I showed him.”
I’m, uh, glad to have made your day, uh, “dood”.
This happens to me all the time. I’ve got a bright red bmw and everytime I turn, accelerate or brake, someone wants to race or crash or some other juvenile thing. After a while, it gets to be kind of fun. When you spot someone like that, accelerate just enough to get their attention. They’ll usually floor it in response and then POOF, they’re out of your life forever.
Oh, I never planned to blow the Mustang away, it just happened that way. I mean, we’re talking about a 94 Escort station wagon, for crying out loud! What have I got? 85-90hp and NO torque to speak of?
Maybe they thought your Escort station wagon was kickin’ rad. (The \m/, the tongue - Gene Simmons much? - and the fist-pumping and all.)
While making a left turn through a particularly strange intersection in the parking lot of a local mall, I accidentally cut off an 18-19 year old guy in some sort of old muscle car. (It was dark; I couldn’t tell) To be fair, it wasn’t all my fault, he was flying through the lot and had he been driving reasonably it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Determined to prove his manliness, the dumbass started following me! At the last second approaching a red light I cut across two lanes into the left turn lane for an ‘emergency’ turn. Instead of just leaving me alone, the guy stopped, reversed, and pulled over into the lane behind me, following my car into the parking lot of a bookstore. He circled a couple of times, but finally left when I went into the bookstore. That forayed pretty far into ‘scary’ territory.
Ames, Iowa. 1998. I’m driving in moderate traffic, and some guys in a '69 Camaro or some such I’m-a-badass-with-a-small-penis car are driving like Dale Jarrett. They’re switching lanes constantly and quickly and so on. I can see them coming up behind me. They pull up next to me, pass me, and zip they’re in my lane in front of me. My lane slows. zip they’re in the next lane. I mean these guys were serious about having a badass car.
We got stopped side by side at a light and I got a look at them. Neither seemed to be in distress; thus I assume they weren’t rushing to the hospital or some such.
All their maneuvering was doing them zero good; at the next light we got stopped side-by-side again. I looked at them and we made eye contact. I chuckled a little bit, being sure they could see me, because they looked so infantile hauling ass like that for no reason.
When the light changed, they got a little ahead of me, and the passenger spit on my car.