Then A Woman Screamed “Jesus Christ! You Made Me Wreck My Fucking Car!”

Once upon a time I was an industrial chemical salesman.

In the job mostly for its glamor and constant traveling, early one morning about 6:30 AM I was fulfilling the travel part by cruising along a gravel covered secondary highway when I encountered a flagman eagerly running safety gauntlet for a road repair crew.

From quite a ways back I could see him fluorescently motioning toward me with a hand held stop sign, signalling for me to slow down and come to a stop.

It was a gorgeous sun-soaked spring morning and as we were the only two people on the road at that hour I started talking to the fellow. He was a gregarious and well experienced road construction dude who seemed open to sharing experience so I asked him about the strangest thing he ever encountered while directing traffic.

Turns out he had a stranger traffic story than I could ever imagine…

Run For Yer Life

“Hah!” the naturally tanned road worker blurted. ” I’ll tell you about one time I nearly got my socks knocked off.”

“You’ll like this one…” he said with a sly grin, shielding his eyes and scanning the distance.

“It was a beautiful, warm early morning – just like today,” he began, setting up his fable while casually leaning against my car.

“I could see a dust cloud being kicked up on the horizon before I actually noticed the car and from the grinding vibes piercing that pristine morning I could tell the vehicle was traveling at least as fast as the speed limit.”

“I remember checking to gauge the gap between me and my crew because I had an odd premonition that this vehicle barreling toward us was going to keep barreling right on through.

I’m not shitting you man, it was freaky.

The hairs were standing up on the back of my neck and I started making purposefully exaggerated ‘slow down’ motions toward this vehicle, waving both my stop sign and free arm.”

“The car sounded like it was reducing speed but I could tell that there was no way in hell it was going to stop before it reached where I was, so like they trained us in flag school, with the car still about 200 yards out I hollered code red on my radio and headed for the ditch.”

“Course, while I’m doing the dangling dodge I continue frantically waving my sign and motioning for the driver to stop and as I looked back over my shoulder I see the vehicle has indeed slowed a bit but I also see that it’s now headed directly at me in the ditch!”

“Giving her full tilt across the ditch I scoot up the far bank and high jump some barbed wire into a freshly plowed farmer’s field. Just as I cleared the fence I’m instantly showered with a dark cloud of exploding dirt and debris from the impact of the vehicle ramming into the ditch embankment two feet below me.”

“Soon as I realized I was likely going to survive the encounter, a way too close car horn began blaring and tandem splitting the serene morning on top of the electronic racket was the wildest female cursing I had ever heard.

Gums Flapping Arms Flapping Its All Dutch To Me

What are you fucking trying to do you moronKILL ME?!” the steaming, sputtering car owner howled through her window as her vehicle engine rattled to a halt.

“Ma’am!” I hollered right back at her, brushing myself off,  “What the hell are you doing?! This is a construction zone! I was motioning for you to slow down and stop!”

“YOU MOTIONED FOR ME TO FOLLOW YOU, YOU FUCKING IDIOT, SO I FOLLOWED YOU AND YOU RAN RIGHT INTO THIS DITCH!” Mrs. PO’d shrieked.

“Jesus Christ! You made me wreck my fucking car!” she bellered, “And somebody’s god damn well paying for this!”

“Oh yeah?! Well you just about killed me!” I yelled defensively back at her, “and now you’re angry with me? Incredible!”

“She even tried to sue our company for damages but wound up getting a traffic ticket for failing to stop at a construction zone when directed.” the young fellow chuckled ponderously as he wound up his story.

Passing truck tires crackling the gravel brought our interesting sharing to a conclusion and his hand held radio fuzzily acknowledged that the coast was clear for me to proceed.

As the road warrior shifted away from yarn stance and back into work mode I slipped my own vehicle into drive and thanked him for his story.

“Yeah, ” he said in goodbye, flipping his sign to SLOW and motioning me onward, “there isn’t much excitement in this job most of the time but when there is, she can get interesting in a hurry.”

He was perfectly right of course and as I meandered off into that clear, wonderful Saskatchewan morning I mused about how much life was like the young fellow’s encounter.

To direct the things in life we can while dodging the things we can’t.

To be oh, so very happy when the outcome ain’t hurtful.

Most of all, not to take things personally even

if it looks like they’re aimed right at us.

Yep, there was wisdom laying rat

there in the ditch of life where

slow sometimes means stop.

Thank you, friend.

Barry out.

 

 

Barry Williams http://barry-williams.com/blog

Much of what I write will be quite understandable to insane folks.

The rest will be, uh, less understandable...

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