I was riding with a friend of mine yesterday, on the way home from Home Depot, and we had a kind of odd experience. Well, actually – I should clarify – I had the odd experience. It wasn’t odd to her at all. But it tripped my shit right out. She drives a convertible Mustang, but the top was up and the windows were up.

We were driving – actually (again) she was driving [had I been driving (being a more competent driver altogether) we probably wouldn’t have had the experience in the first place] and she cut some lady off in a Buick. My friend drives like a blind, retarded lemur with no legs in the first place, so riding with her is a real treat. You can see in the passenger floorboard, the carpet is kind of worn out from her passengers slamming on imaginary brakes. I’m a pretty laid-back passenger and not much scares me, but when I’m riding with her, I can’t watch the road. Frankly, she scares the great green shit out of me. You are guaranteed an ulcer in twenty minutes if she drives you through downtown Dallas traffic. Not that I would ever actually ride with her through downtown Dallas during traffic.

So anyway, she was about to miss her left turn, so I notified her, and she promptly swerved over into the turn lane – in the nick of time – and then checked her mirrors. Fortunately, the woman in the Buick had been about four inches behind us, so we missed her. Here’s the good part: We get around the corner and start slowing down to go over a rain ditch, and this bitch in the Buick comes flying up next to us on the driver’s side, and rolls down her passenger window. Sans passenger, I could see this being more effective, but her husband / lover / boyfriend / incestuous son was in the passenger seat leaning back trying to avoid the flying fists and words. This woman was yelling her ass off! Her face was red as a tomato, and she was flipping us off (well, my friend anyway) and yelling and shaking her fist, shouting expletives to our closed window.

Of course my friend wasn’t paying attention. She was concentrating on the road, God bless her. But this woman keeps on keeping on, and she’s swerving her ass off, and a couple of times, she came really close to hitting us. Her car would lurch back into the other lane, though, and she’d start over. I thought it funny that I was just sitting here staring at this foolish woman, while my friend is driving, and I noticed her husband / sex slave / butler / neighbor’s uncle was just sitting there staring back at me. And I know he was enjoying this as much as I was. We almost smirked at each other.

Just before I busted out laughing at how foolish this woman looked, my friend waved and smiled really big at the other driver, and went on. Buick bitch kept swerving closer and closer though, and finally, we had to take evasive measures, in order to avoid being hit. This woman didn’t realize (because she was too busy looking at my friend) that her lane had just ended, and she was now in the oncoming lane. I took note of this, and despite my disdain for this idiot, I didn’t want to see her killed in a head-on collision. So I reached over and honked and nodded forward. She looked up and realized what was going on, and – get this – instead of slamming on her brakes and falling in behind us, she slams the car over into our lane without us having left it first. I think I must have seen it coming, because my hand was already on the steering wheel, and I cranked it around, taking us off the road and into the grass.

My friend (and thank goodness she did this) threw her hands up like the cops had pulled a gun on her, and just let me have the wheel. But at the same time, she slammed on the brakes, so we slid like an ice cube on linoleum across the grass and started spinning. When the car stopped (which was pretty quickly), we were facing the wrong way. But we didn’t get hit by the Buick bitch. And that, I kept stressing, was what was important. I wanted, of course, to hunt her down and slash her tires and give her a heavy dose of Space Speak, but she was too far ahead. I looked over at my friend and told her calmly, “Next time, I’m driving.”