Caution: Bad Driver Ahead

Some of you might have noticed on my side bar that one of my pet peeves is people who drive slow in the fast lane. This is only one. How about people who drive faster in the fast lane, than the fast lane will handle? And then zoom up to you and sit on your tail, and then cut into the slow lane, and then zoom back into the fast lane, and then sit on someone else's tail, until they can do it all over again?

Or people who pull through the turning lane quickly, even though you are about to come through the intersection, and then slow down, and make you drive behind them for the rest of the ride. This makes you look like your accelerator is attached to an elastic - "Slow down, oh, he's speeding up a little, oh, no he's not... wait ...yep, I can accelera te... no. I guess not."

Another one which I can't stand is people who come to a stop light, intending to turn when it goes green, but some how never get around to letting anyone know.

This happened one time when we were moving.

My husband had to get the moving van back to the rental shop before noon.

I was following behind, with the other vehicle, kids in tow.

They were strapped into their car seats.

There was one vehicle between my husband and me.

The light turned green.

My husband went straight.

The vehicle in front of me made a small effort to accelerate.

Then, oopsie.

He s.l.o.w.e.d. d....o....w.n.

Then acceleratedjusta wee bit.

Then he s.t.o....p..p..e..d.

I began to lose patience.

His signal light went on.

Blink, blink, blink.

And there I was.

STUCK.

Behind him.
While he decided if turning was a good idea or not.

"Come on you Idiot". I huffed.

From the back seat came the incredulous voice of my three-year old son.:

"MOMMMM!!! You called that man the "I" word."

Too late, I realized I had used my outside voice. I immediately apologized to my son, because we were trying to teach our children not to use language like that. I had modeled bad behaviour. 'My bad,' as they say.

He was not ready to end the lesson:

"That is not nice Mommy. You should not use the "I" word. "

I felt I needed to apologize again. I didn't really apologize using my best effort, but I let my mouth say the words.

He was undeterred:

"How do you think that man would feel if he knew you were calling him the "I" word?"

By now, I felt completely chastised. I mumbled something resembling another apology, which I hoped would end the conversation. I had bigger fish to fry - we had to get to the rental place, and now it was 11:59 a.m.

My son pulled out the big guns:

"It does not make Jesus happy, when you use the "I" word.

O.K. Now I felt really bad. More than that, I felt ticked off that I had to keep apologizing for something I didn't really feel guilty about, except for the fact that I was caught out in a 'bad behaviour' by my three-year old.

"Honey," I said, with just a wee bit of annoyance, "I said I'm sorry. How many times do I have to say it before you let it go. I'm sorry, I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY!!!"

Pause.

Then his three-year old voice admonished:

"I know you are sorry. But I'm just talking to you about it, so the next time you will think a little bit more before you use bad language."