You're once...twice...three times a jerk. My jerk report from yesterday.

Tweet

As you know, I kind of live in my own private Iowa. I am generally nice to people, I let other drivers in in traffic, and I wave thanks when folks let me in in traffic. Yesterday morning, as I was driving to my liquor store to get wine and cigarettes, I pulled up at a stop light. It's a stop light where two lanes merge into one immediately after the light. I pulled up to the left of the other vehicle there, and held back slightly behind them, to let them know that they could go first into the merge. Another car pulled up behind us, in the lane behind the car I was letting in. It was a large pick-up truck, like mine. Ms Horse used to make reference to the "zipper principle." She is in my freezer now, but I liked certain things about the way she viewed the world. If two lanes are merging into one, you treat it like a zipper. One car from the left, one car from the right. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. The guy to my right and behind me accelerated hard and "beat" me to the intersection. I wound up behind him on a road where we can only go 30 mph anyway. Jerk move number 1: defying the zipper principle. I thought, "MyLot post! It has to be a middle aged woman. They are the most aggressive drivers around here." But I knew I'd never see the driver, as they were ahead of me and seemingly in a hurry. Until they turned hard left into the liquor store parking lot. Jerk move number 2: The driver took up two parking spaces, not one. I waited, wondering how a middle aged woman had wound up driving a big pick-up truck. The person who got out of the truck was a middle-aged man, like me. I laughed to myself and said "hypothesis refuted." Then I went into the store. I chuckled and said to myself, "With my luck, this guy will get in line in front of me and be one of those wahoos who buys 10 lottery tickets." I was joking! He beat me to the counter and said, "I'll have five of those...and two each of those those and those...no wait...three of those..." He was "that guy," the one who takes five minutes buying lottery tickets while I'm waiting there with nothing more than a bottle of wine in my hands. Jerk move number 3. But I made it home and later played music with my friend Ken. It was a good afternoon. Do you let jerks and lottery tickets bring you down? It's only castles burning...