"MY TURN."
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One of the greatest joys of my round trip to work every day is that I have to pass through Lamar county, Mississippi. Lamar county is home to some of the dumbest wastes of human skin to ever walk the face of the planet and I had the very good fortune to run into one of these ambulating inbred sacks of protoplasm as I was leaving work one day.

This is that story.

I was heading home after a really long day at work and I was looking forward to a thirty mile trip with a much needed nap at the end of my journey. I hadn’t been sleeping very well the past week or so and I really didn’t know why. Life was fine, job was fine, family was fine, but I couldn’t sleep and when I did sleep, it felt like I had worked or fought all night long, so I woke up feeling like I hadn’t gotten any rest at all. What I did know was that I was tired and not in the mood to put up with anything that was going to come between me and about a six to eight hour snore-a-thon.

I yawned through gritted teeth, hearing the breath roar in my ears like a freight train. My left driving gloved hand gripped the steering wheel of the Grand Prix GTP and my right leather gloved hand held the gear shifter nonchalantly, the knob atop it I often referred to as the Frankenstein stitched baseball in an unflattering way. The steering wheel mounted radio controls were a blessing, and I station surfed from conservative talk radio to classic rock and everything in between, trying to find something worth listening to for the next forty five minutes or so. I glanced over the HUD and the information center, checked the mileage, range, fuel used and oil life. I noticed that I had ten percent of the expected oil life left on this go around and made a mental note to get the GTP serviced sometime this week.

I normally travel down West Fourth street and head towards Turtle Creek Mall where I catch Highway 98 West and head towards home thirty miles away. During the Daylight Savings months, the trip is hell as in the morning I’m heading east into the rising sun, and in the afternoon I’m heading west into the setting sun, so I’m blinded both ways. It’s a pain in the ass for about six months out of the year.

Traffic is pretty easy on West Fourth for about half an hour before and after five in the afternoon. If you hit it at five o’clock, may God have mercy on your soul because apparently they open the barn doors and forget how to close them. I had timed my journey home at about a quarter to five, giving me a good fifteen minutes to get out of the way of the herd that was coming.

The Grand Prix sat idling as the second car at the light, in the right hand turn lane. I had the driver’s window rolled down and the sunroof cranked all the way back. It was southern Mississippi, in the winter, the middle of January, and the temperature outside, according to the readout on the climate control system, was a chilly sixty eight degrees. I was wearing a leather jacket and a T-shirt, my normal work wear in the Mississippi winter, and I usually chuck the jacket for most of the day.

I was waiting on one of the longest traffic lights in that area of the city to change so that the person in front of me would go straight through the light and I could make a right hand turn onto West Fourth street. The car in front of me, when I cared to pay attention to the details, was a dirty white Ford Taurus, late model, with Lamar county plate and a big Dale Earnhardt stylized red number three in the rear window. Nothing says uneducated, white trash, trailer park loser like a NASCAR decal on your car, let alone a giant decal in the rear window that turns your entire car into a vast rolling pagan shrine for some trendy but dead redneck. I noticed that the stylized number three had a halo around it, or it could have been a hoola hoop for all I knew.  It pains me to know that such a large portion of our society not only thinks that NASCAR is real racing, but also puts a fervent, religious like faith into a dead redneck.

The exhaust from the Taurus was a little louder than I would have normally thought, until I realized that the exhaust note was accompanied by some type of crudely spoken words in a language I wasn’t quite sure if I was familiar with. No, that can’t be right, I thought as I hit the MUTE button on the steering wheel and started looking for the source of the noise pollution. I glanced over at the Shell station to the right, across the intersection, and saw this wannabe ass clown get into this lowered down, mustard orange (more like the color of sick baby poo poo) Chevy S-10 X-Treme pickup truck. Now, the whole idea of lowering a pickup truck always struck me as being kind of stupid, like making a submarine that had a convertible top.  A pickup is a work truck, it was designed to haul heavy loads, and thus it needs some suspension clearance to absorb the weight of any load it carries. Sport truck owners I also filed under a special retardation label, especially ones like this ass clown who took a perfectly good looking truck and added clear tail lights, a big custom “X-TREME” rear window decal (in case he forgot what kind of truck he drove), lowered it almost to the ground, with vogue wire rim wheels, white wall tires (fashion heresy), and a ridiculously oversized coffee can exhaust pipe sticking out from the rear bumper.  The fact that you can find Japanese kanji writing on an American vehicle furthers my already dim view of those that populate certain parts of our society.

WTF was wrong with the younger generation? I blame MTV and the constant parade of terminal losers they showcase on their various excuses for ‘reality TV.’

The driver fit the “whigger” stereotype almost perfectly. Rich whiteboy, no tan, bleached and spiked hair, backwards baseball cap, two colored bandannas tied around his upper right arm, baggy pants, West Coast Choppers muscle T-shirt (no muscles), gaudy gold chain collection (probably from the Indian kiosk at the mall), wallet on a chain in his back pocket, and what appeared to be a rather badly done attempt at growing and shaping a goatee.  He was carrying a suitcase of Bud Light on his shoulder and, as most whiggers are prone to doing, he had left his stereo on blaring some aberrant form of rap music for the obvious enjoyment of all while he had gone into the store to shop for his liquid supper. The volume level of his stereo was loud enough to hear across the parking lot, across the busy intersection by me with my driver’s side window down and the sunroof open.

(C)rap music is offensive to me even without the profanity because of what it stands for (stupidity) but whatever this noise was that was being broadcast from his speakers seemed even more particularly so. It all goes back to my professional opinion that no one with an IQ greater than their shoe size listens to, let alone takes (c)rap as a serious form of music.  Listening to (c)rap music is an admission of your own failure as an educated human being.  Anyone with a third grade education (but no higher) can (c)rap with aplomb. Dismissing the laughable ass clown and using the steering wheel controls for my own radio, I canceled the mute and clicked up the volume another two notches as Metallica’s Whiskey in a Jar started to play on Fox 103.7 FM.  Don't get me wrong, I’m no real big fan of Metallica either, especially after they sold out and started their we hate Napster-give us all of your money crusade that did nothing but increase the traffic in downloaded music, but it was certainly better than what the whigger was presenting and with the bass turned all the way up, you can almost forget that the band you are listening to, a band that was cool twenty five years ago, was now relegated to major suckage and money grabbing publicity stands. Lars Ulrich can suck my left nut, I was copying their music long before Napster was ever introduced, it was called cassette in the receiver and taping directly from the radio. Hell, I had been doing that for almost three decades now, back when Metallica was actually a cool band, with original content and direction, and they didn’t have the large flock of diet minded posers that comprise their lackluster fan base these days.

It was late, my brain was numb, and I wasn't sure that the bad parts of it weren't at the helm guiding the ship of mind, so to speak.

I looked across at the sign for the Shell station and noticed that they advertised that the store carried “the coldest beer allowed by law.” That really struck me as somewhat funny and I chuckled because I didn’t know there was a law that dictated the temperature of beer, or the ability to sell beer of one temperature or another. Perhaps it was the law of thermal dynamics, in that any beer kept below thirty two degrees would undergo a physical transformation and could be considered less of beer and more along the lines of a beer flavored popsicle. The coldest beer allowed by law? What? Did Hattiesburg have a beer temperature enforcement team who would write convenience stores tickets and issue fines if their beer wasn’t kept a certain temperature?

I sighed. I really needed to get some shut-eye if I was starting to compare the merits of Metallica to some unknown (c)rap artist or think too deep on the double wide logic used by some store manager to sell more horse piss to the NASCAR worshipping wage slaves that frequented his urban based convenience item brothel.

The light at the intersection in front of me changed and my attention instantly snapped back to the present. The dirty white Taurus in front of me pulled forward, put their turn signal on, and made a right turn onto West Fourth street.

What the…?

These morons had sat there for five minutes and had opportunity after opportunity to make a right on red turn and they didn’t! Now how do you explain that bit of mental retardation?

Easy.

Lamar county license plate. Oh, yeah, and we can’t forget the big Dale Earnhardt stylized red number 3 decal in the rear window with the hoola hoop hung on it. They grow them dumb in Lamar county, they really do. I’ve often thought that with as many accidents as happen in Lamar county, that the standard driver’s ed program must consist of letting the kids watch NASCAR reruns over and over again. That would explain Lamar county residents’ apparent inability to make right hand turns because they’ve been taught all their life to drive fast and turn left.

I sighed and wrote the moron off in front of me as never being able to contribute anything valuable to the collective gene pool. West Fourth street is a three lane blacktop affair for about a mile where after it becomes a twisting, downward spiraling two lane with blind curves and bad intersections. The center lane is a mile long turn lane, but most Lamar county people use it as a passing lane or they simply drive down it all the way for a mile, like it was just another normal lane, until they get to the stop light at the intersection. No one ever said that Lamar county was the center of intelligence in the universe, and if you look at the driving habits of these cretins, you’d understand why.

I accelerated slowly and turned onto West Fourth street, building up speed. I passed by the still rap blaring whigger owned S-10 and notice the two West Coast Choppers decals in each side of the rear window. I deduct even more points from this mental pygmy’s IQ score, which places him in a dead heat intellectually with a Happy Meal from McDonald’s though the smart money would be on the Happy Meal in any spirited debate.

As I’m driving past the entrance to the parking lot of the convenience store, the whigger-fied X-treme S-10 barks its gold wire rim wheel shod white wall tires and leaps from the parking lot towards the street. It’s a rather pathetic tire squeal and I’m unimpressed to say the least.  The Taco Bell dog had more bark than this moron could produce. The guy must have thought that he was just going to sail out of the parking lot with the pedal floored, use the turn lane to accelerate faster than I was going and pull in front of me in the car length and a half space that existed between the nose of the Grand Prix and the tail of the white Taurus.

I don't think so, Sparky.

That just wasn’t going to be happening, so I adjusted my foot pressure on the accelerator slightly and prevented him from running out of the parking lot, through the turn lane, and winding up in front of me with only inches to spare.  The last thing I wanted was his baby turd colored mustard orange paint on my front end.  It would look like I had a hit and run with a Muppet.  My maneuver was done so gradually that it seemed like he had simply miscalculated his approach and speed. I’m sure it caused him a great amount of consternation and noggin scratching.

Wait your turn like everyone else, Sparky, I thought to myself.

Now if there is one thing that really miffs me, it’s people who are impatient and rude, especially in traffic. I gently eased up a little more to make sure that Sparky couldn’t whip in between me and the white Ford Taurus in front of me, and that gave him just two choices; either speed up and try to get in front of the Taurus before the turn lane ran out (requiring about twice the legal speed limit of 35mph in the current zone) or slow down and get behind me.

Well, Sparky wasn’t having any of that second idea and I guess that he felt that his manhood was being challenged, not that it would have taken much to do so.  (C)rap music and bass blared next to me as the mustard orange S-10 accelerated to keep pace with me, I was in the right hand traffic lane, he was in the center turn lane. I nudged up carefully, closer to the white Ford Taurus in front of me, preventing the whigger from hopping in front of me. Oh dear, he was about to run out of turn lane and he’d have to slow down and get behind me or slam on brakes to avoid hitting oncoming traffic.

He didn’t do either.

I glanced over at the backwards cap wearing retard with a sly smile on my face and he flipped me off, shouting something that I couldn’t hear over the bass and retard music blaring, and he gunned his little lowered S-10 for all it was worth, which wasn’t much. I watched in abject amazement as he managed to get enough speed built up to fly past the white Ford Taurus that was in front of me and to not go more than two car lengths past the end of the turn lane in his bid to whip past us and get in front. Yes, he had a Lamar county tag on his pickup truck, which I would have been surprised if he hadn’t. The fact that he almost went head on into oncoming traffic probably didn’t cause him to consider his actions too much or the blaring horns from the car and truck in oncoming traffic that he almost ran off into the ditch on the side of the road.  At that moment in time, he probably thought that he was the greatest driver in the world, or at least of the same caliber as those no-skill, hard driving, talent-less ass clowns that they represent in movies like "The Fast and the Furious."

Amateur.

I backed off about five miles an hour of speed back down to thirty five and followed the white Taurus down West Fourth street, across the overpass of highway 59, and into Lamar county. We didn’t have very far to go, about half a mile past the end of the three lane, before we ran smack into the typical string of traffic that piles up on the overpass. You see, there’s a unprotected left turn at the bottom of the hill, and as it is a two lane, with lots of traffic both directions, if a vehicle wants to turn to the left, naturally it holds up every vehicle behind it and thus creates a rather large stack.

I laughed when I saw that the mustard orange S-10 X-treme was still in front of the white Taurus, stuck in traffic. All of that displayed speed and it didn’t do him a bit of good. The next ten minutes were spent slowly inching up one car length at a time as the intersection cleared below us. The sound of (c)rap music was still coming on strong from the S-10 and as soon as the car in front of him managed to turn left, he gunned the S-10 again, with another short bark of the tires. The Taurus in front of me managed to turn left quickly so I didn’t have to stop. This deft maneuver and good fortune placed me right behind the mustard orange S-10, now caught in front of me in a line of cars waiting to pass through a four way stop sign controlled intersection.  (C)rap music was shaking my windows, but I endured it, mentally laughing at the poser fondue of stickers and witticisms that this loser had plastered to the rear areas of his poor little truck.  The "orgasm donor" sticker and the red, white, and blue "pimp" decal, in the shape of a NBA logo, I guess were gifts from the Eminem fan club when he joined and allowed one loser to identify another in the various circles of society.

He and I inched up one car length at a time, until it was time for the car in front of him to go through the intersection. True to his Lamar county roots and the superior drivers’ education program that exists in that county, the mustard orange S-10 simply followed the car in front of him on through the intersection, two for the price of one. He then stayed on the bumper of the car in front of him until he was out of sight. Stuff like that also infuriates me to no end.

I waited my turn and cleared the intersection. I figured that the mustard orange S-10 would be long gone, as there were numerous apartments along the way for him to duck into and call his home. Such was not to be, though. The street I turn off on, which runs past Turtle Creek Mall, is also a left hand turn on a busy two lane and our mental pygmy de jour had once again had to stop behind someone turning left across a steady flow of oncoming traffic. The car in front of him finally managed to turn and he peeled out, this time the bark was more substantial because he managed to rev his engine in neutral before dropping it into fourth and letting the tranny take some well deserved abuse. The S-10 wheel hopped across the road and slid sideways slightly, which I guess he thought was an incredible display of raw snarling horsepower. The funny thing was, as he was doing the shrieking bunny hop across the two lane, I noticed that his coffee can exhaust was wobbling, bad.

If there was any justice in the world, that joke would fall off and he wouldn't discover it until it was too late.

I cleared the intersection shortly after he did, having only to wait on one car to pass.  Why he couldn’t wait instead of taking the huge risk of getting t-boned by oncoming traffic, I’ll just have to chalk up to immaturity and lack of experience. I calmly accelerated down the road to the next four way stop, the last stop sign controlled intersection before I hit the two lights at the mall. Once again, the mustard orange S-10 had come to a stop in front of me behind two cars waiting to clear the intersection. I wondered if he would just follow the car in front of him through like he did before?

No, he had different plans.

Apparently, I had pissed him off by not letting him in front of me back on West Fourth street and also by staying right behind him all the way when he so desperately tried to out drive and out distance me.  I guess he was bound and determined to put me in my place by showing me, every chance he got, how he was a much better driver and how he had a much more powerful vehicle than I did.

As the car in front of him cleared the stop sign, he eased up and threw his S-10 into neutral. I think he was a bit over-enthusiastic as I saw his backup indicators blink and he was obviously wrestling with the shifter, from what I could see through the decal slathered rear window.  My own hand hit the shift lock, ready to throw the Grand Prix's transmission into reverse if this ass clown should try to reverse ram me.  Being a police officer makes you kind of paranoid sometimes, especially with no brain lump fucks like the one in front of me.  The handgrip of my PT-92AF Taurus 9mm semi-automatic pistol was on the passenger seat, ready in case he wanted to make this up close and personal.

More quick movements from inside the truck and all of my cop warning flags were up.  It just didn't strike me as being good news that he threw his truck into park at an intersection then started rummaging around near and under his seat for something.

"What's on your mind, sparky?" I asked myself quietly, my gloved hand moving over to grip the Taurus.

As his truck was lowered, his movements were about eye level with my point of view. I don't know what his problem was, but I was patient enough to let him work it out on his own time.  The car behind me blew its horn impatiently and the whigger turned around to stare at me.  I stared back impassively.  He flipped me off and mouthed something but it was hard to tell through the huge rear window X-Treme decal.

His favorite trick, it seemed, was now to rev his engine into the stratosphere and throw the automatic transmission into gear. I guess that was the only way he could peel out with any real effect. I laughed as he once again revved his motor, the coffee can exhaust sounding like a constipated cow, and then laughed again when he couldn’t get the truck into gear. He had to wait until the engine fell back down in RPM before he revved it again and threw it into gear.  This time he met with limited success and he was rewarded with another shrieking bunny hop through the intersection.  My hand left the comfort of the Taurus' handgrip as the whigger stuck his left hand out the driver’s side window and flipped me off again.

Angst.  It comes from watching MTV and drinking cheap horse piss.  That and inbreeding.  The poor guy never stood a chance, genetically speaking, of being anything other than the loser he was.

Now, normally, I would have just let the whole incident go, that is, if he hadn’t pelted the front of my Grand Prix and my windshield with gravel that he scratched off from the intersection.  I watched as three good size pebbles bounced off my front windshield and rolled across my hood, finally dropping off the side of the fenders back to the ground.  You just made a bad choice there, amigo.

And then, sometimes, life hands you the sweetest things at the best moment possible.

As the whigger zoomed off, he must have been looking in the rear view mirror to see my expression. I’m sure he didn’t expect to see me laughing my ass off and when he scanned backwards to see what I was laughing at, it was his coffee can exhaust tip that was slowly rolling through the exit of the intersection. I guess it had vibrated loose in all the spastic bunny hopping he was doing, as there at the far end of the intersection, rolling slowly towards me on its side, profile view, was his stupid exhaust tip. It had some kind of engraved kanji on the side that was colored red, but I couldn’t tell who made it, nor did I care.

It was time for payback.

The S-10 driver slammed on brakes and then frantically pulled into the nearest parking lot of some offices on the right side of the road. (C)rap music still blaring loudly, he threw open the door and started running towards the intersection to retrieve what amounted to probably the mechanical equivalent of the left testicle of the poorly colored rolling penis that was his truck.

I saw him swearing and cussing, waving at me frantically or something to that effect.  I smiled.

“My turn.” I said flatly.

I hit the MUTE button on the steering wheel as I wanted to enjoy what was going to come next. My right foot was on the brake pedal of the Grand Prix, and my gloved thumb hit the PERFORMANCE SHIFT toggle on the side of the gear shift and switched off the traction control on the dash. The PERFORMANCE SHIFT indicator light lit on the center console data center.  My foot went from the brake pedal all the way to the accelerator pedal, stomping it to its full stop in one solid motion. Instantly, the L67 under the hood snarled to life and an orchestra of mechanical parts began a beautiful heavy metal symphony of performance.

The two hundred and forty horsepower, three point eight liter fuel injected V6 roared under the hood, planting me back in the driver’s seat with just a hint of blower whine. The front Goodyear radial tires spun in place, overcome by the two hundred and eighty pounds / foot of torque being produced, and thick tire smoke poured out from under the tire wells as they sought to gain traction and I smiled. The smell of burnt rubber invaded the interior of the car as the blower fan drew in the smoke and it entered through the open sun roof and the powered down driver’s side door window. It was a smell that I was more than familiar with, and one I never grew tired of enjoying.

Torque steer started to become apparent, felt through my gloved hand on the wheel as the boost indicator pegged out at its maximum rating and the engine continued to howl. The Grand Prix started to accelerate, slowly, through the intersection amid the front tires screaming and smoking. The smell of burnt rubber and thick tire smoke wafted around the front of the car as I fought the vibrating wheel in my gloved hand, aiming the nose straight. The S-10 owner just stood there dumbfounded in the front lawn of someone’s house and he stared open mouthed as this four door black sedan’s entire front end was engulfed in tire smoke. It must have looked pretty awesome when the nose slowly started emerging from the cloud of destroyed tire vapor and the Grand Prix seemingly leapt screaming out of its own smoke cloud, continuing to lay down smoke from its spinning front tires.

I adjusted my angle of approach slightly and was doing almost thirty-five miles an hour, according to the HUD readout, when I felt a very satisfying crunch-thump under the car, another crunch-thump quickly followed from the rear underbody and I kept the hammer nailed as I blew past the slack jawed whigger. I threw him the thumbs up sign out the driver's side window but never made eye contact. I watched in the rear view mirror as he turned to watch me blow past and made some futile hand gestures or gang signs, but his attention was drawn back to the middle of the intersection and the piece of crumpled up exhaust tip that the Grand Prix had done a pretty good job of panzering flat. I let off the boost once the Grand Prix shifted from second to third gear, my right hand clicked off the performance shift option on the gear shifter.

“Nice things happen to nice people, Pendejo.” I muttered, smiling and turning the stereo back on as I continued my trip on home with no more interruptions.
 

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