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In a TV show that I particularly like, one of the characters is a very bad driver. For instance, when parking on the street, instead of parallel parking, she just pulls up to the curb nose first, so that she's perpendicular to all the other cars parked and the direction of traffic.
Someone did this in front of me today while I was driving to the post office. We're talking Boston streets here, so it's very confusing to visualize, but I was veering to the right fork in the road (on a green light) while she was coming from the other direction taking her left fork and going to the road which would have been a hard right for me. Basically it's like I was going straight (on a green light) and she was making a left-hand turn across traffic. I'm pretty darned sure I had the right of way. But no big deal, really, because there was plenty of time for her to make her turn and continue on down that street with me just taking my foot of the gas.
Except she didn't continue on. She swung wide in order to just pull up to the curb right at the corner. In her Large American SUV, this created a little bit of an oh-my-god adrenaline tickle for me. We were never in any danger of crashing metal against metal, but there was enough of a situation that I did suddenly try my brakes out and swerved a little to the left. And I could see the surprise and shock register on her face too as she glanced out of the passenger side window, knowing that she was having to slow down to park (in her ingenious arrangement) and couldn't move way out of my way quickly.
As I drove past, she was turning her head to look at me and I smiled at her, ready to forgive this weird driving faux pas. I know that driving around here can be super confusing, and there are also so many people that sometimes you just have to make something up in order to get where you want to be. I would have appreciated it if she had waited until there wasn't on-coming traffic (namely, me) before implementing this little bit of ad lib driving. But like I said, no harm no foul; I was ready to let it go for her. She was even mouthing her apology to me as I moved on. "Sorry, " I saw her mouth begin. But no. "Sah-loww down" is actually what she was saying. Excuse me? You think that was my fault?
How many days until we move to small-town Colorado?