The accident happened because of a psychosomatic disorder that I like to call IAAS: Ignorant, Arrogant [Anus] Syndrome. It is pronounced, as you might guess, "I ass," and it is affecting a growing number of people every day. While most of the afflicted are probably full-time sufferers, the condition seems to manifest itself most often in heavy traffic. Despite overwhelming and irrefutable raw sensory evidence that literally hundreds of other drivers, in every sort of vehicle, are all driving, um, "less than optimally," shall we say, IAASes seem to suffer from the almost hallucinogenicly-induced conviction that if they can just get past that damn big rig up ahead, cut him off quickly and slam on their brakes, then all of their commuting woes will be solved.
This particular attack of IAAS was more severe than most: Some fecal-brained bozo wearing way too much cologne succumbed to the deranged impulse to pass me on the right --on the shoulder, mind you-- and try to shoe-horn his new, white Lexus (which, by the way, is a thoroughly overrated car) into a space that would have been cramped even if he'd been driving nothing more than a Radio Flyer. He didn't have room, but he didn't let that bother him. He simply ran into me.
It had been that kind of day. In fact, it had been that kind of week. It started with the discovery, bright and early Monday morning, that my semi-tractor --the company's tractor, to which I was assigned-- had been stolen from the lot outside the company warehouse over the weekend. Probably it was used, in turn, to steal a trailer full of appliances or stereo equipment or some-such from somewhere else. In any case, it was recovered a couple of days later, abandoned in a business park a few miles away, somewhat the worse for wear. By then, of course, the company had rented a replacement for me to use. Since I was on the road all week, I was still driving the rental when the accident happened.
I figured the accident would be the capper: The last bad thing to happen on the last bad day of a bad week. I was wrong.
It was well after sundown by the time I got back to the warehouse. My car was the only one left in the darkened lot. It wasn't alone, however: Someone was hunched over it-- just in front of the driver's-side door. I felt the muscles around my eyes contract, trying to bring the scene into sharper focus as I drove toward it.
I stopped a few feet away. The dark, hunched figure was a woman. She was reading a newspaper, even in that dim light. She had it spread out on the hood of my car and was leaning over it, close. As I pulled up, she straightened. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, dark clothes. But who the hell was she?
I opened the door and climbed down. I stood there for a few seconds, feeling dumb. Then I said, "Uh, who the hell are you?"
"I'm waiting for my husband," she said.
That didn't answer my question, but I went with it anyway: "And who is he?"
She lifted an arm, index finger extended. She didn't point, exactly, she just sort of waved in a general westerly direction. "He's down there," she said.
That didn't answer my question, either-- not really. There was another trucking company with a warehouse several hundred yards "down there," and I assumed that's where she meant. It was the only place likely to still be open at that hour. It didn't explain, though, why she was "up here," using my car as a park bench. I pointed all of this out to her, especially the part about it being my car. Looking back on it now, I probably should have thrown in the term "private property" a couple of times, but --silly me-- I thought it was implied. See, where I come from, a person's car is their private property. Apparently, not everyone feels that way. I also mentioned that the company whose property she was trespassing on had had two tractors (mine and one other) stolen recently from that very lot. I didn't use the word "trespassing," though. And I tried not to come across as accusational. I was just trying to make her understand why I was asking so many questions.
She folded the newspaper and put it under her arm. "He should be here soon," she said. VOC: Very Oblique Conversationalist. I didn't say anything more to her. We spent the next several minutes in an uncomfortable, silent, slow-motion sort of dance: She tried to keep her distance from me without going anywhere and I tried to keep an eye on her without seeming like I was stalking. I also took a few seconds to give my car a quick once-over.
Before too long, a silver-colored van pulled into the lot and parked near the end of my trailer. The woman walked over to it, got in. I stood there, all suspicious-looking, for a second or two more, then I climbed back into the truck and waited for the van to move. He had me blocked: I needed to back up about a hundred feet, the first in a short series of maneuvers I needed to make before backing into the warehouse loading dock. But I needed the van to move first.
It didn't. A few long seconds went by and then the guy got out and started stomping my way. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, dark clothes. He marched up to my open window and started yelling. I've no idea where he was from: He had a thick, thick accent that I couldn't place. I had trouble following it, too. I'm not trying to be a jerk about that: I simply have trouble understanding thick, unfamiliar accents. After about thirty seconds, though, I got the gist of what he was saying: He was very, very angry... and I, apparently, was a racist [sphincter].
*Irony Alert*
Oh, how I love being called a racist by people who are stepping on my toes.
Really, how convenient. How nice it must be to be a brown person arguing with a dusky-pale pink person and have a ready-made "get out of disagreement free" card that you can play at any time, especially when you're wrong and/or you're acting like an [anus].
Last week, you might remember, I said a few words about the spin-doctoring battle between the terms "undocumented" and "illegal." One-F expressed the opinion --and it's certainly a valid point-- that the immigration issue is being stirred up like a big dust cloud, largely for the purpose of distracting us from other, more important topics. Well, the "racist" label is the same sort of cloud, stirred up within the immigration issue and for a similar purpose. Rather than confront the illegality of taking up unauthorized residence, many on the pro-amnesty side of the argument have gone on the attack, calling their opponents "racists." True, some of them probably are racists. Most of them, however, are not. In either case, it's still a cop-out: It just muddies the water. So-hey-cousin-guess-what: If I call you an [anus], it isn't because you're brown... It's because you're acting like an [anus].
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P.S... Bud "IAAS" Selig must go.
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