Ok Ya'll, This Made Me Laugh - #1

I was driving to work last evening and was in a bit of a hurry. I wasn't running late, but I was running "on time", and because Saturday nights at the restaurant are so busy, being on time is critical.

I am generally a very good driver, and in particular, a very courteous driver. I have the name of "Jesus" in an ichthus on the back of my car, so the manner in which I treat people on the road really matters. I can't espouse the tenets of Jesus on my bumper and then go and act like Satan himself at the wheel. I'm ultra-conscientious about the way I drive.

Anyway, I was pulling out of my neighborhood and onto a highway frontage road. A few cars were coming down the hill, but I felt for sure I could beat them all. I began inching my car out, when I suddenly realized there was a minivan coming down at such a rate of speed that I simply was not going to be able to pull out. I mean, I could have, but I would have had to rudely peel out in front of her. So, I stopped, but I was already a couple of feet into her lane.

Right as she passed me, she slowed a bit, and I gave her a sheepish little wave, ya know, the universal sign for, "My bad, I messed up, I'm so sorry."

I expected a wave back. I mean, can't we all just get along? Honest mistake, let's move on from this, right? Well, it was not to be. Indeed, what happened next was astounding.

She wagged her finger at me. Let me repeat that: She wagged her finger at me. Three times, in fact. Wag. Wag. Wag.

Ok ya'll. No one has wagged their finger at me since Bill Clinton told me that he definitely did NOT have any kind of relations with "that woman." And let me just say for the record that I didn't like finger-wagging then, and I don't like it now.

I sorta couldn't believe it. I began to wonder if she had said anything aloud to me as well, ya know, like: "You better mind your p's and q's little missy!" Or perhaps, "Maybe you need to go to your room and think about what you did." I almost felt a lump in my throat, as if I was going to cry, just out of sheer humiliation. But had I done that, I felt certain she would have turned her car around, walked right over to my window, and told me that I'd better stop that crying or she'd give me something to really cry about.

As I continued driving to work, I started lightening up a bit, and realized that this had been a hilarious incident. I began HOWLING thinking about it. I had been admonished with a finger-wagging from a complete stranger in a minivan!

I lost my mother a few years ago, and I am always grateful for any little bits of mothering that I can get. But this was not exactly what I had in mind...