The Left Turn Incident

One hallmark of being a guy is getting into pointless competitions for absolutely no reason whatsoever. For example, in the sixth grade some of my classmates would occasionally get into contests at school to see who could stand around outside in the dead of winter the longest without a jacket on. Unsurprisingly, no females were ever involved in these battles of will.

Now, while I’m generally able to fight off my own personal Neanderthalic (#NewWord) side, in terms of not getting involved in pointless competitions, there still are times when I just can’t help myself. Case in point: I was driving home from work recently. I was heading south on the freeway, minding my own business, and hoping that the Oak Ridge Boys would come on the radio. I took my exit and pulled up to the stoplight. I was the first car in line. I was going to turn left and go east, over the freeway. Now, at this intersection there are two left turn lanes, of which I was in the far right. I did this because the other one takes you into the left lane of the overpass, which is always backed up with people turning left to head north onto the freeway. Confused? Maybe a hastily made diagram will help.

 

At this point everything was going fine. However, as I was waiting for the light to turn green, a car pulled up next to me in the far left turn lane. I glanced over to make sure it wasn’t somebody cool, like Little Jimmie Dickens, but unfortunately it wasn’t. Instead, it was an incredibly smug-looking man whom I immediately knew had evil lurking in his heart. He was driving a sporty car and had on sunglasses meant not only for eye protection, but also to look cool, which meant that he hadn’t just pulled up next to me on accident. No, he knew exactly what he was doing! His intentions were obvious: When the light turned green, he was going to beat me off the line, race into the left lane of the overpass, and then merge into the right lane in front of me, narrowly missing out on the backed up traffic and thus asserting his dominance over me. It would look something like this:

 

This man obviously didn’t consider me much of a threat, which was why he’d chosen to pull up next to me instead of behind me. It was probably because of my car, which is a conservative-looking machine I affectionately refer to as the GrandpaMobile.

Now, before we go any further, you may be wondering how I knew this was the man’s plan. Well, let’s just say that it’s a guy thing, something instinctive, something almost primitive, and it was crystal clear to me that he’d just thrown down a gauntlet and was essentially taunting me, as if he was saying, “I’ll bet I get over this overpass before you, wimp!”

And so it was, as they say, on like Donkey Kong. (At least I think they say that.)

Now, logic and safety dictated that I just let this man execute his plan and beat me over the overpass. However, logic and safety had been thrown out of the window as part of the implicit challenge he’d laid down before me. I took a deep breath and readied myself, my eyes focused intently on the stop light in front of me. This was going to be close…

The light turned green.

Sure enough, Evil Guy was instantly out of the gate and accelerating at an unnecessarily high rate, verifying all of my suspicions as to his wickedness. The GrandpaMobile, however, responded in kind to my own prodding. I had a wider turn to make, but I didn’t have to beat him, I just had to stay even with him. Using my peripheral vision, I saw that I was staying neck and neck with him, and I smiled. Evil Guy was running out of time, because there were cars backed up in his lane due to motorists waiting to turn left onto the northbound freeway ramp.

Moments later, Evil Guy braked, let me move ahead, and swung in behind me. Chalk one up for the GrandpaMobile. I’d won!!!!

After some mental celebration, I reverted back into a sensible human being and all is currently well. However, I know that the need for pointless competition within me has only been suppressed momentarily, and not fully extinguished. When will it rear its ugly head again? What crazy situation will I wind up in when it does? And most importantly, will I be able to make cool diagrams of it afterwards? Only time will tell…