Wacko Drivers

Church in Maine today, one of the two parishes we visit regularly (the other parish is very small, and only has services every other week). During the sermon, the priest mentioned that it has been a very tough Lent for him, and that got my attention, since every Orthodox Christian I know has said this has been an unusually tough Lent. I wonder why?

Afterwards, we drove to our daughter's house for lunch. Our daughter became a Catholic a year or two after her marriage, so for them Easter is long over, and she had -- meat. Just meat. Around 3:30, just as we were thinking of getting underway, she trotted out the strawberries she'd been saving for dessert. That's the kind of Lent it's been. We did have a nice visit, if you ignore the counter-cultural Orthodox bits -- and the fact that the Orthodox "bits" are your whole life, somehow gets lost in translation. I'm still trying to figure out how to get that across.

Anyway, after a truly lovely afternoon we drove home our usual way. As we took a turn-off onto a side road, a van shot past us and one of the passengers yelled something at us. A mile or so later, we were on another highway -- also part of our usual route -- and the same van pulled up hard on our bumper, then passed, forcing us into the breakdown lane to avoid getting our bumper clipped, and gave us the finger once it was in front of us -- sped off down the road, having narrowly missed oncoming traffic. I hate warm weather, it brings out all the nuts. (I should add that my husband was driving the speed limit, which was 55 mph.)

Three or four miles down the road, we pulled up to a traffic light, right behind the green van. The light turned, the van didn't move, and my husband tapped the horn. The driver started up -- came to a dead stop so that we were smack in the middle of the intersection -- then took off with a roar, and a few hundred yards down the road, made a left into a gas station. I didn't like the look of that. Sure enough, shortly thereafter, who do we see in our rear-view mirror again. This time, we were close to a State Police barracks, so my husband pulled into the parking lot, giving Tootsie a chance to get a decent distance down the road. And that was the end of that -- we thought.

We get all the way into Sanford, which is about 15 miles from where all this started, and whom do we see in the left-turn lane? Fortunately (we thought) we were going straight, so we did, and Tootsie made her left. Suddenly my husband pulls hard into a side street and heads down, glancing into his rear-view mirror -- this chick had made a U-turn after making her left, and was pursuing us down the main road out of Sanford. Can you say "stalking"?

The side street seems to have done the trick; we got back onto an intersecting main road, and got home by another way. I just hope this idiot isn't roaming the streets of our town, looking in each and every driveway for our car.

What is it with female drivers, anyway?! I used to get so offended when I was young, and men would make remarks about Female (or Women) Drivers; but so help me, they were right. All the worst drivers around here are women, and I don't understand why.