Instant carma

so lovely

Traveling north this week toward the nation’s capital I was accosted by a Tesla fella who evidently felt it his mission in life to get in front of my Sprinter van. (Missionaries can be obnoxious.) The speed limit was 70 and I was in the hammer lane doing 75. He was behind me, upping his blood pressure and insisting to himself that he was important. Meanwhile I was passing one car after another, but Tesla fella was not satisfied. He was dissatisfied to the point of placing his hundred-thousand dollar battery car in a position more precarious than ever he could have imagined. He must have thought a five-thousand pound car could intimidate someone (like me) driving a ten-foot tall, ten-thousand pound truck.

I could have given him the hammer lane by barging my way into the chain of cars in the slow lane, but that would have been rude; besides, doing so would have been proactive in another person’s favor, and the very concept of such a thing disturbs me, especially as pertains to tailgaters in Teslas.

Although I was steadily passing cars in the slow lane, Tesla fella would not back off. I eventually tired of the sight of his white car five feet behind me, and thought yeah, that’s just about the right distance for a brake check. So, courteous driver that I am, I flipped on my turn signal to notify Tesla fella that I would be moving into the slow lane. I did that about a millisecond before standing up on the brake pedal. The five feet of clearance subsequently evaporated like a whim, and the inch or two that remained proved beyond all doubt that Teslas have good brakes. As Tesla fella was sopping up the five-dollar latte he’d just splattered all over his dashboard, I eased into the slow lane.

“Don’t be messin’ with that guy,” she warned. “He’s got road rage. He might have a gun.” I just turned and said, “Yeah? I’ve got one for each hand.”

After taking control of the hammer lane my adversary came alongside my van. I couldn’t see him through his dark-tinted windows, but I’m pretty sure he could see me laughing at him. He moved on and I moved back into the hammer lane. He slowed down, of course. The slow lane was open, so I went that direction. He moved over to block me. I moved again, he blocked again. Satisfied that he had taught me a lesson, he stomped down on his electricity pedal and sent millions of little electrons scurrying every which direction inside the big battery/bomb he was sitting on top of. Whoosh! He was gone.

I followed along amused, and as is my nature, hoping for the best. I’m particular about what I consider to be the best, and a suitable incarnation at once appeared in the distance, manifesting itself in the form of a Virginia state trooper. After I had been dismissed from class and Tesla fella had zoomed away into the distance, he had unwittingly done so at the exact instant that a dutiful trooper was staring right at him down the barrel of a radar gun.

Suddenly an awesome panorama of big blue beautiful beacons flashed across the heavens, and as Tesla fella pulled onto the roadside to await his conference with law enforcement, I knowingly smiled and waved as I went on my way.