Banding Together

   There's a stretch of Interstate in Birmingham as you head south on the Red Mountain Expressway where you must get into the right lane to exit onto I-20 East. 


   It's not new, in fact it's been that way for over 30 years. People that drive that section of road know that you must get into the right lane and traffic inevitably backs up. It's the nature of the beast. You have too many cars heading in that direction and the road was not designed to handle that number of cars.


   But as I said, people who drive that road daily understand it and they simply slow down and deal with it. If a driver has an out of state tag and happens to get stuck in the wrong lane, people will always give them space so they can merge over.


   From day one, there has been impatient drivers who feel their time is more valuable than anyone else's so they speed down the adjacent lane and then at the last minute, they swerve over in front of drivers who did the right thing and got into the lane when they were supposed to. 


   When the inconsiderate turd-heads (pardon my Appalachian American vocabulary), swerve over in front of the good drivers, everyone has to slam on their brakes.

   It doesn't help that the turd-heads are normally chatting on their cell phones oblivious to the fact that they've almost caused a calamity. 


   This drives me crazy and I can say without hesitation, that I have not missed it since I retired last year. 


   However on occasion, today for example, I have to travel that road.  But today something extraordinary happened.  There was a Porche, and two BMW's with turd-head drivers, all of them on cell phones, who apparently intended to cut in line in front of a group of good drivers. 


   It looked almost as if it had been choreographed, because the group in the right lane closed ranks almost bumper to bumper.  They weren't going that fast so it wasn't that hard to do. No one would let the Porche or the Beamers in. The TH's had to come to a complete stop in the left lane. Cars behind them started stacking up and horns began blaring.

   I'm guessing some drivers behind the ill mannered twits were saying some very unflattering things about their parents and others in their linage.


   I actually laughed out loud. I know it was wrong, but I don't regret it -- I flipped those three guys the bird as I eased past them. If it were possible, I would have hugged every driver that banded together today.


   I know some people sprang out of the shallow end of the gene pool, and will never learn to do what's right, but today three guys paid for not doing what's right.