My New Hero

Driving in Kansas City is not the most joyful of experiences I've ever hard. Since moving here, one thing I dearly miss is open roads and a lack of stoplights. Lately construction has been really bad. Going into downtown they have closed two lanes on I-35 and we were lucky enough to have to go down that way for my dad's graduation last Saturday. It was backed up for miles and while I will not question the validity of having two out of three lanes closed for miles when you're working on a 1/2-mile section of the highway, I will say that this construction phenomenon led me to see one of the coolest things I've seen in my whole life.

The way home was even more backed up than the way there and as we were nearing the end of the merging of the final two lanes, my hero emerged. One car, dismissing the line that spanned for miles, and obviously in a state of higher importance than the rest of us, decided it would be OK to barrel down the ending lane and bypass the rest of us suckers stuck in the line of eternity.

Now I see this all the time. People who think they are more important or their time is more valuable, so they scoot around and wait until the last possible second to merge, thinking...well they will have to let me in when I'm out of room. I have been guilty of letting these fools in to save myself from eminent danger. And mostly because I don't have the cahones to do otherwise.

This is where my hero comes in. Seeing the overly self-important person coming in the merging lane, a man in a humble car moved into this lane in front of him. We thought...what is this guy doing? At first we thought he was trying to pass people. Until the other car came whizzing by. He held his ground and prevented the car from going around everyone else in front. The car swerved around in an apparent fit at seeing the demise of his evil plan and finally accepted his fate. My hero had blatently told this jerk: Not today - you have to wait like the rest of us.

Honestly, we laughed and cheered and thought...why haven't we thought of doing this before? Seeing it done, I think maybe I could have the cahones do to it in the future. Here's to you Mr. cut-off-the-jerk-trying-to-pass-everyone-in-the-merging-lane-guy! You are my new hero.