A New POV

Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Pennsylvania, on the road to Tennessee

Here’s to all the right-lane passers, sudden brakers, finger-givers, speeder-uppers, horn sounders, pass-and-pull-in-too-sooners, phone-talkers, paper-readers and other violators of common sense as they drive. May they one day purchase a 32,000 pound vehicle and have to deal with the likes of themselves.

Trucks, buses and motor homes locomote differently. There’s a big difference between 2500 pounds of Chevy in motion and 32,000 pounds of dynamic thrust. You just don’t stop on a dime. You don’t ride the brakes either, or they’ll burn out. You pump, decreasing your motion on increments. Surprises don’t work for us big machines. We need to plan ahead.

We don’t suffer fools, either. Make a mistake in judgment, put your attention somewhere else, or try and sneak by us as we’re turning, changing lanes or slowing for a light, and it’s our fault if we crush you to breadbox size. Even if St. Peter at the gate tells you it’s your fault, down here we’ll be charged. And of course, it goes without saying that we’ll feel bad about you too.

So have a heart for the monsters of the road. I never appreciated truck drivers more. Except of course for that one big oaf who gave us the finger as we burned past him on a country highway. I guess he didn’t realize we had joined his fraternity. Or maybe he was blackballing us after the fact.

I couldn’t possibly have been that, while he’d been to trucker school and passed all the tests to get his job, we’d simply jumped behind the wheel with our ordinary driver’s licenses, which sometimes meant that in getting used to our extra girth, we shaved the hair off the side of people’s heads as we squeaked by. No, that couldn’t possibly have been it.

Drive safely.
Betty