So, I’m driving to work today, north on the I-5 to 405 interchange (the El Toro ‘Y’), and this low-rider, 20-inch rim Escalade driving douche decides to cut me off. I was in the far right lane ready to exit. He was in the lane to the left, maybe a few inches ahead of me. Then he starts to sort of inch over, getting close to the line but not going over, probably thinking it was a sufficient indication that he intended to move over. Well, I don’t see a turn signal and I don’t see any arm signals (you know, the ones they teach you in driving school that you’re supposed to use if your lights don’t work), so I maintain my speed. He stays there, hugging the line for a second or two. When he notices I’m not slowing down to let him over (there was a line of cars in front of me so he couldn’t just speed up) he just goes anyway and gives me the bird as I’m slamming on the brakes (he has to roll down his window to make his gesture, with the tinting I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise). So I’m looking for my horn (you can never find it when you’re angry), and just when a lay into it, a turkey vulture swoops in his open driver side window and lands on him, talons to chest. As the vulture plucks out his eyes the Escalade drifts out of control and crashes into the side rail. The car bucks up over the rail, and rolls end over end, coming to a stop, rubber side up, in a ditch. As it comes to a rest the vulture hops out of the vehicle, unscathed, with two dangling eyeballs hanging from its beak. Using its bloody talons the bird pulls a lighter from the now screaming driver’s breast pocket, strikes the flint, lights the eyeballs on fire and crams them back into the guy’s eye sockets. Then the vulture drops the still lit lighter onto a pool of leaked gas and flies away. Three seconds later the Escalade is engulfed (cars don’t actually explode when they catch on fire like they do in the movies). The driver miraculously manages to crawl out the window. Blinded, eyeballs on fire, he scurries around in circles screaming, “AAAHHHH!! THIS IS SO WHACK!!!!!!!” Amazingly his flat-billed trucker hat has stayed on his head in its slightly off center tilt. He’s wearing a Sacramento Kings “Bibby” jersey and as I drive on to my exit, I can just make out the “Limp Bizkit” tattoo on his shoulder before the skin melts off.
This brings us to Rantiquette’s rule of car travel the first: “ALWAYS use your turn signal.” Whether you’re changing lanes, turning from a dedicated turn lane, pulling into a parking spot, weaving in & out of traffic trying to outrun the feds, pulling a last second U-Turn (what median?) because you just saw Lindsay Lohan going the other way and you promised yourself years ago that if you ever had the chance you’d tell Lindsay that despite what everyone says you truly understand her and you know that if she got to know you, you think you could be BFFs, use your turn signal. Even if you are positive no one is looking, because you’re David Faustino and no one has been looking for decades, use your turn signal.
For you philosophizers, I realize that there here appears a logical conflict. If the foundation upon which all Rantiquette rests is, “Never do anything that is unpleasant to others,” how can one break a rule if there is no one around to experience the unpleasantness? My answer is this: if a douche bag is watching a movie in the woods and no one hears him talking to his ‘bros’ via cell phone, he is in fact NOT being rude. He is, however, still a douche bag.
The point is, one should use Rantiquette to cultivate good life-long habits, not to simply check items off a list. a.k.a. Try to make using your turn signal a habit, not something you have to think about.
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