Turban Man

Every day I have a little over 20 miles to drive to work, and then another 20+ miles to get back home. Most days, if I time it right, I can step out my front door at home and be walking into work in exactly 30 minutes. Recently I have had to deal at least once a week with a jerk in a little gold Audi who happens to wear a dark burgundy turban.

The first encounter with him was in mid-February... I left my house as usual to head to work, and I wasn't in a particular hurry since I was running a bit early. From my neighborhood, there is a street running West for about 1.5 miles which takes me to my main roadway for the majority of my trip. As I pulled into the turn lane to head south, I see a gold Audi in my rear-view cut somebody off and then nearly jump into the bed of my pickup. Some sick part of me waits to be rear-ended because my Dodge has a stinger (for towing) off the back that would surely puncture the radiator of 95% of the vehicles out there and render them useless. For me it would be a small triumph over idiot drivers if my vehicle were to do extra damage in a fender-bender. ANYWAYS, Turban Man looks irritated that the light is red, he shifts about his car trying to see around me (which wouldn't have been an issue if he hadn't tried to kiss my bumper), and when the light turns green he honks his horn, even though there are 4 cars including myself in front of him.

Traffic begins to move, and two of the drivers move to the center of the 3 lanes on the main road, the driver directly in front of me turns into the far right lane, and I turn into the leftmost lane and returned to daydreaming for my drive. But then I hear honking from right behind me, and it's the angry little bastard in the gold Audi. I glare at him through my rear-view mirror, and see he is waving my hands in the Get-The-Fuck-Out-Of-My-Way gesture. Now the speed limit through this stretch is 50 MPH, and I'm probably going about 57... and I'm passing the three cars that had been in front of me at the light. I wave at Turban Man in my mirror, and then see him flipping me off. I decided to slow down to block him in, and then as we approached the next big intersection the light turns yellow... and I gun it and go through, and he runs the red, then passes while flipping me off. I smiled, flipped him off in return and watched him speed away.

Over the last few weeks I've seen him multiple times while driving in our other car (a Hybrid) and simply let him fly around me and the rest of traffic without a care, in the same gold Audi with the same dark burgundy turban. In my city, the beginning of the month brings cops-a-plenty to the main roadways to assign tickets to meet their monthly cha-ching quotas early for the police department. I know how this works, I know where they like to get people, and I drive particulary carefully during these times. I think Turban Man is new to the area... because last week on March 2nd I saw him pulled over, standing at the back of his vehicle with his arms flailing apparently trying to argue with the officer. Bad idea - - because arguing can lead to an arrest, which can lead to a lifetime of anger, causing more tickets, forcing you into bankruptcy due to the excessively high ticket costs, eventually driving you to drink, then steal, then get locked up to be somebody's girlfriend in prison all because you didn't just take that initial ticket without arguing.

Mmmm, angry little Turban Man, you have so much to learn my little grasshopper. Now stop driving like a jerk and leave earlier so you don't have to rush so much, dude.