Yesterday

Earlier

"My husband needs help scooting up in bed" the woman said.

Her husband had just walked 75 feet without help, two days after very minor surgery.

But I went into the room anyhow. Sure enough, he was lying in bed, all six feet two inches of his college-football-player self, with his feet pressed against the footboard.

"I need to move up in bed." he said.

I replied, "Then I suggest you get out of bed, take two steps toward the head of the bed, sit down on the edge of the bed, and lie down again."

"But I've been moving myself *all day*!" he protested.

"Tough," I said. "No way in blazes am I going to lift you in that bed. You're a foot taller than I am, a hundred pounds heavier, five years younger, and in good shape. You'll have to do it yourself."

Later he complained that I had embarrassed him in front of his friends. "Son," I said, "you're lucky I wasn't trying to embarrass you. Weren't you ashamed to have to ask me to do something you knew damn well you could do yourself?"

Later

Merging onto the highway on the way home from work, I got behind one of those people you just know are going to be trouble.

Sure enough, she merged on to a six-lane, busy highway at 35 mph.

She then proceeded to cross two lanes (with signal; I'll give her that) at 40 mph.

This in an area where traffic in the slow lane routinely moves at 60.

I lost sight of her as I strained my poor car's engine to get out of her way.

Even Later

Getting *off* the highway to come home, I almost died.

The exit that I take is short and uphill. At the end of the uphill bit, there's a quick swing to the left, a double white line (DO NOT CROSS DOUBLE WHITE LINE), and then a stoplight about a hundred yards downhill.

The person in front of me stopped. Dead. Just on the other side of the hill. Apparently they don't have merge lanes on service roads in Tennessee. That's the only reason I could think of as to why Mister Tennessee Plates On The Minivan Man would simply...stop. In a lane of traffic where everybody's coming off the highway like bats out of hell.

Which left my ass hanging out behind his, vulnerable to the next lifted Dodge pickemup that barreled over the hill. I beeped, quickly and politely, to remind him that he needed to get out of the way, and that it was possible to do so without CROSSING DOUBLE WHITE LINE.

Oy. He did, thank God, get out of the way. And I got home alive, just barely.