Ah, to revel in the downfall of others…what a joy. And when that person is a real douche, seeing them go down is just plain righteous. I know they say revenge is a dish best served cold, but gloating over the misfortune of a jerk…it has to be tastiest when it is toasty enough to burn the roof of your mouth.

Why the celebration you ask? I was driving home from errands earlier and witnessed a particularly inventive bit of really dangerous bad driving. And I think it resonates so much with me because this is far form the first time I have witnessed it.

See, there’s a point in this one lane highway (speed limit 50) where another road intersects via an underpass. So the junction is accomplished with an on ramp. See, drivers can come off the other road and make almost a full circle to come onto an on ramp on the road in question, the road I was on. From my perspective, there is a right lane that appears for about 100 yards or so. Once in a while, someone merges onto the road I was on (a road I drive very frequently) by entering from the right lane. Traffic is not that bad and it’s usually an easy merge to juggle.

Now very occasionally you get someone who is so self-centered, so obnoxious, so reckless, or maybe just really late for their colon cleanse, and they decide that the person in front of them is going too slow. When they come to this stretch of right lane merge, they choose to slide into that merge lane and use it as a passing lane (a passing on the right lane, in fact) and speed past the person they are following. This will only work if there is noone actually using the merge lane as an entrance lane to merge from, of course.

Today, not for the first time, the driver directly in front of me chose to pull the mega reckless douche move and pass on the right when we got to the merge. It seemed to be a pretty unnecessary act of aggression because the car s/he wished to pass was going at least 55. Once in a while we get old-timers or out of state drivers doing 35 and it is frustrating. Of course, in the defense of the elderly, infirm, and weary (or should it be wary) travellers, the road has very little speed signage.

As I said, though, this was not the case. This guy was just being a jerk. But guess what…as s/he made the move, there was actually a cop on the other side of the road. And though I was about to make a disparaging remark about the cops never doing anything, I was stunned to guilty silence when the cop actually yoinked into a driveway, did a fast U-turn and came back after the guy.

This driver was so busted that s/he actually pulled over before the cop even got fully turned around with his lights flashing. It was awesome. You ever watch a guy blow by doing like 90 in a 45 and then half a mile later there’s a cop on the side of the road and you wonder what the hell they’re doing and why they missed the speeder? You know how you have that desire to see the jerk pulled over? Do you, like me, fantasize about honking and waving as you drive by and that jerk is in full shame, pulled over, maybe even getting cuffed against the hood?

This was sort of a fulfillment of the dream. So righteous.