The Red Minivan

For anyone who has commuted to work in Detroit, or any major city for that matter, you may understand the frustration and road rage that has recently entered my life.

On an average day, you wake up at the same time, shower, dress, maybe even eat a little breakfast, but you typically pull out of the drive at approximately the same time everyday, and arrive to work at approximately the same time so much time later. And you may have started to notice that your drive to work is repetitive, you hit the same lights, you see the same buses and trucks, and even a few of the same cars. You know the ones, that guy who has the vanity plate that says “GOATBOY,” there’s that chick that always cuts in front of you two exits early and on some days you feel frisky and don’t let her in, other days you don’t even realize that you’ve slowed to a crawl and its all her fault.

For me, I see “red minivan” as he’s been nicknamed. The problem with Red, is that he’s one of my neighbors, so I start out behind him any time I am running a bit late. I have no problems with this neighbor outside of his unusual driving habits. I have talked to him casually, we even searched for the owner of a dog that had gotten loose. But the problem with Red, is that at least 3 times, he’s pulled out of his driveway, with a front windshield fogged or iced over, and proceeds to drive with his head out his driver’s side window. I think you can see where I am going with this. He drives slow. He swerves. And for crying out loud, when he sees a string of cars gathering behind him, he doesn’t even pull over!

So the first encounter with Red, he pulled out in front of me and I was thinking to myself, what an idiot, but as he continued to drive down the street, even turning on to the next street that I needed to go down to, that’s when I got annoyed, and I gave a little honk. Nothing. So, I figured out I had enough room to pass and just flew around him. I thought it was a one time only situation.

The second time, it was the same scenario, only he was a street ahead of me and I caught up to him as he turned onto the main road. I thought there was no way, how is this guy turning on to the busy main road with his head sticking out the window? And when he swerved into oncoming traffic, I put my foot to the pedal, and passed him on the shoulder. This guy was now endangering so many lives!

Since these two times, if I see him backing out of his drive, I panic and speed up hoping that I can get in front of him, but the crazy thing is that he doesn’t even see me! We had a close one this morning even. I was considering getting him an ice scraper as a present, but now that the ice is gone, and its just fog, I don’t know if I should just give up hope, or buy him a Sham Wow!©