So here I am, driving home from swim practice, still wet and cold from the pool. I really just want to get home and get some coffee and relax. I'm in no mood for shananigans of any kind. You know that mood when sometimes you feel like you just want a teleportation device to take you straight home and not to any driving of any kind? Yeah, that's how I felt. Just add in a heap of homework and hours of exhaustion.
Here I am, just starting my drive on an old single lane backroad that is rarely traveled. It's late, so I figure I'll have a pretty breezy ride home with less traffic. However, only minutes into my drive, it already goes downhill - a blue SUV Volvo pulls right on out in front of me from a driveway. Sure, Volvo, it make SO much more sense to merge in front of a high speed vehicle than behind it, where you can take all the time in the world to accelerate.
So she pulls out in front of me and I have to slam on my breaks to avoid hitting her silly little bumper. (I will proceed to use female pronouns throughout my blogging when the gender of the vehecile-offender is unknown, because, lets face it, women really are worse drivers - and yes, I am female myself). She seems to disregard my presence and proceeds to accelerate at the pace of a snail. After about five minutes of torture, she finally reaches the ridiculously high speed of...wait for it.... TWENTY-FIVE MILES PER HOUR. No joke. As you can imagine, at this point, I'm a bit peeved. Scratch that. ALOT peeved. I'm wet, my heat has yet to warm up, and I'm in need of some caffeine. So naturally, I proceed to ride her bumper relentlessly so my message is clearly sent.
It is.
At the end of this two lane road, it curves off at stop sign that meets a larger road with multiple lanes. Here's my chance to make up for lost time. After the Volvo turns on to the road, I'll just zoom in the other lane and proceed home. But instead of turning on to the larger road, the Volvo stops at the stop sign (naturally) and the driver side door opens (unnaturally).
So here I am thinking, "O God, what's happening? What does she want? Is something wrong with her car? But nope, none of those things are true. Instead, I look up to see a middle-aged man, very dad-like, striding over to my jeep. He signals me to roll my window down. I reluctantly do so, just an inch.
"EXCUSE ME, DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE SPEED LIMIT IS?? I just want to let you know that children play along this road all the time and you need to know that you need to be more careful. And the speed limit is TWENTY FIVE."
"Ok, thank you sir".
And that was that. Just got terrorized by a middle-aged dad driving a Volvo. Felt pretty bad with a combination of mad, I must say. It was the perfect way to start of drive home.
So the next morning on my way to school, I drove along that same road, paying special attential to the speed limit. I saw that rectangular black and white sign read not 25 mph, but a whole FIFTEEN MILES PER HOUR above that. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the speed limit was FORTY, not 25, as the Volvo dad had previously mentioned. And might I add that I have never seen children frolic along that road in my four years of driving along it.
So there middle-aged-Volvo-driving-dad. Us youngings are sometimes better drivers than you give us credit for.
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