Award Tour Vol. 35: I Didn't Have to Call Him a Punk

So once I was doing an internship in Houston, Texas (I did alot of internships... most of them gave me the opportunity to see what I DIDN'T want to do for a living). This internship is really no different in that regard. I get along well with the interns and the lady who recruited me to start with - but the people I work with are a bunch of walking a$$es masquerading as normal likeable people (it's been almost 10 years, and I can still say that). Let me further clarify my statement. The technicians that I worked with are all salt-of-the-earth kind of people. Hard working, good natured, humorous. Them I liked. Basically everyone who was paid on an hourly scale - they were people you looked forward to working with. Then there were the engineers.

Before I begin, let me preface my statements, I am not biased against engineers... I am one. That's what I do for a living currently (and only because that Mega Millions things hasn't quite worked out yet... damn those astronomical odds against winning). So it's not that I have an axe to grind against the profession - more like a poisonous dart that I throw at it from time to time. Why? Again - it's not a grudge - it's just that I am also a living breathing human being - and on occassion, I treat others like they are human beings as well... (it's a novel concept but it has actually paid dividends more times than the Lotto has).

Humanity was a concept that was foreign to the engineers at this company (which will remain nameless). These people weren't even people... they were more like the missing link between us and the prototypes of the Terminator. They looked like human beings, and sounded like them but in reality they were just a bunch of souless automatons, who plugged themselves into a wall and fed themselves through an umbilical chord at night. Their lives didn't just revolve around finding a way to back-bite and out-manuever their coworkers... they were dedicated to it. That is what they did. They engineered and they double crossed . I'm willing to bet that some of them actually believe that they got paid to do both.

When they were not actively sabotaging others in an effort to climb another quarter inch up the Corporate ladder, they disguised the knives they intended to jab into the soft part of your back with pleasantries like:

"Hey how's it going"
"There he is"
"Hey want to go to lunch"?

Each one so remarkably insincere and forced, you would think they were testing themselves to see just how sarcastic they could really be. But since you asked let me respond. "How's it going? Didn't you just convene a meeting about my project behind my back after I JUST asked you to keep me in the loop if we were going to make any changes? How do you suppose it's going after some bull$h!t like that?"

If it were not for the social life offered in Houston, this internship would literally have shaved years off of my life expectancy. I took every opportunity to blow off steam... every opportunity to find new social outlets. It didn't matter how big or small... anything if it had nothing to do with work.

For example, I had to give my friend Rhonda a ride home from work. She lived a little ways north of the apartment I was renting out, and though it's a little out of the way, it's no problem because she is cute (and I'm laying the ground work for future rendevouzes... like I said social outlets). I drop her off, and stop at a gas station to fill up and to wash my car (Exxon used to have automatic car wash areas at their stations... some of them still do).

So I'm gassed up, car is clean. I'm going to head back home and see if I can make some plans for the evening. In certain areas of Houston in the suburbs (at least at the time I was out there) they used to have two lane highways all over the place but no protected turns. And when I say protected turns, I mean, lights that let people make left hand turns while oncoming traffic is held at bay. See the Figure.

I was at the front of the line poised to make my left, but it is around 5 or 6 o'clock, and everyone is getting off of work right now - there are a lot of cars on the road. I know it is a stretch of the imagination but - alot of those cars are headed in the opposite direction of where I'm going. This opposite direction represents on-coming traffic (I know, I know... I am always coming up with these new and unheard of paradigms - I mean who would think that traffic could go in more than one direction? This is revolutionary).

This means when the light turns green, I will have to wait before I can make my turn. This both confuses and angers a man driving a black pick-up truck several cars behind me. He's not into this whole unprotected-turn-wait-for-oncoming-traffic-jazz... he sees a green light and green means go. I understand his frustration in principle. I don't particularly care for people who are slow to react at green lights either... but there is no way for me to make this turn without causing a major accident in the intersection, and so I wait (another novel concept).

I guess it was too much to ask him to wait too. When the right hand lane on our road emptied out, he jumped out into that lane quickly, and then lays on the horn as he's driving up. And when I say he laid into it, I mean, he held it down like a man drowning his arch-rival in the shallow end of a lake. The horn blared the whole way up... I heard the Doppler Shift and everything. It was an angry, unbroken, protest in the key of "F#$% You" done for everyone at the intersection to see. Is this enough to assuage his anger? No. He hasn't insulted me enough yet. He must also drive past and flip me the bird. And so he does...

...perhaps he should have quit while he was ahead.

By this time I had actually started to take my left hand turn - as oncoming traffic had let up. I was already half way in the turn when I saw the truck drive by with the driver flipping me the bird defiantly. "Son of a -" I didn't even get to finish my thought before the gamma radiation took over. I whip the wheel back to the right furiously aborting my left hand turn and stomp on the gas... to chase this idiot down.

This is road rage in full blossom. "You're gonna blow your horn at me AND flip me the bird? And the bird?"

As I pulled out of my left-hand turn at the last second and gunned the engine, I looked up at the driver of the truck as he sped down the street. I saw him glance, in horror, into his side view mirror realizing to some extent what he has just done. As I slowly walked him down (and how I managed to do this, I'm not sure since he was driving what appeared to be an F-150 and I was driving a Ford Escort - in terms of comparison of horse power there wasn't one - the F-150 has it the Escort does not) I saw him check periodically with great nervousness in his rear view mirror as I got closer.

"Yeah... ma' f#$%^& - I'm coming after you. Don't check your rear view to see if I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere, I AM coming for your monkey a$$."

I finally managed to pull up beside him, and [no exaggeration] rolled down the passenger side window (with the crank, not with any buttons... no power windows on this model of Escort) and asked him, "Do you have a f#$%^&* problem???" - all while not watching the road.

Even with my window rolled down, and my car as close to his truck as I could possibly get it, I couldn't have heard what he was saying (even if he had had the sacks to actually say something - which he didn't). Instead he became a mime, gesturing in a much more humble and emasculated fashion than he had just a few moments ago at the intersection. He attempted to explain what he meant by his antics. Fortunately for you I speak "mimish" and can translate.

First he waved his hand side to side and shook his head. This means:

"No sir, I have no quarrel with you."

He pointed back towards the intersection that we just left. Not vigorously, but softly, like the fortitude of his spine. This means:

"I was flipping the bird to someone else."

Oh I see, so you were blowing your horn AND flipping the bird at the OTHER black guy in the Ford Escort making an unprotected left turn at the last intersection. Got it.

Rather than leave anything to debate or to question, I spurn the use of "mimish" and instead end the dialog with the audible and unmistakable, "Yeah, I didn't THINK so... Punk B#$%&!!!" The driver of the truck declined to respond - probably a good decision. I slowed my car down, at the next intersection... did a U-turn and went home. The other driver didn't dare look back at me (I know cause I glowered at him). I hope he had some Adult Huggies or Depends on, cause by the look on his face when I drove off, I think there's an excellent chance that he uh - had a gastro-intestinal evacuation during the confrontation. Oh well. I've been exhonerated. All's well that ends well.

What? You think that was too much? You think I was over the top. You know what? You're right. I didn't have to call him a punk.