Phreaking Priuspism

Didja ever stop to think ... and forget to start again?

I just took the wife to work. She's managed to let her driver's license run out over a technicality involving names and social security numbers. So I drove her to work on three hours of sleep. I'll be the first to admit I was grumpy. But only a mile from the house found my pleasant, albeit scorchingly hot, jaunt to town rendered into a "slow boat to China" agonal trek. All because of a phreaking Prius.

It was a dark, smoke gray. The windows were tinted. License plate is a vanity which reads "PRRRRR." Spoiler on the rear deck (as if!) blocks any chance of a view through the windshield of oncoming traffic. And the car is all over the road. First off to the side with the tires on the gravel verge and then kissing the center line with a 14 yard Mack Truck coming on. At the stop sign, it just sits. Hole after hole in traffic ignored. My blood pressure climbs higher and higher. One minute, two, then three minutes of sitting behind this car. Finally I start to back up to go around it and it takes off into an available hole. I follow.

More meaningless meandering. I climb onto the rear bumper and angrily flash my lights as the Prius does 30 in a 50. It pulls to the right two feet with a steady stream of traffic coming at us in the opposite lane. Not enough room to pass. I seethe.

No luck at the light - we get stuck behind this offensive unguent offal. Green brings an amazing 2mph start up the hill, climaxing at 25. When it goes to four lanes and the Prius pulls to the left hand lane and sits at 25 I lose it and pass on the right. My wife turns and looks and gives me what I had feared was the reality after all.

"It's a little old lady who has coke bottle bottom glasses and too short to see over the wheel, so it's adjusted so she can look between the wheel and the high dash. Smoking a cigarette and talking on a cell phone."

I gotta start carrying a shotgun when I drive during peak hours...