So there I am, driving down I-5 in the right lane, minding my own business, when Metro comes in from the on-ramp. He needs to merge, but there’s plenty of room behind me, so I don’t really pay any attention. I just keep doing what I’m doing, which is following pretty close to the car in front of me, since I’m taking the next exit and we aren’t going that fast anyway.

It becomes apparent that Busman doesn’t want to pull his enormous rig into the equally enormous space behind me, and that he instead plans to just merge right on top of me, absorbing my car in his carelessness. This annoys me, but he is about 30 times bigger than me, so I start to slow down.

All of a sudden, Bustard slams on the brakes, practically swerving off the road, as if he’s just now realized that his lane ends and that there’s a car frantically trying to avoid being flattened by his persistent leftward drifting.

I’m confused, because I was slowing down to let him hog the road, but now I’m forced to either slam on my brakes as well to continue to allow his retardation, or punch it to get past him and out of the Film-at-11 danger zone. I choose the latter.

I take my exit and stop at the light.

Curiously, he too takes the exit and stops at the light, although his bus placard says “Return to Terminal” and this is most definitely not the way to the bus barn.

Suddenly, Captain Daredevil is standing next to my window, which I’m obliged to roll down, although I’m more than a little weirded out by the abrupt appearance of a bus driver not in his bus, but standing beside my car.

He bursts out with, “You know, I have a really hard job! I don’t need you to make it any harder!” I start to explain, in my bewilderment, that I was slowing down to let him go by, when he interrupts with a sarcastic “Thanks!” and some eye rolling, muttering, and head shaking. Then he stalks back to his power animal.

The light changes, and I continue on my merry way, perplexed and angry at the senseless berating I just received for having the nerve to get practically run off the road.

I assume that the Transit Avenger got back on the freeway and went wherever he was originally supposed to go. Hopefully, wherever that is, they have some good meds there.

I woke up 25 minutes past when I should have left for work. After showering, throwing on some clothes, scrunching my hair into a lumpy ponytail, putting on minimal makeup, and wishing I had time to eat something, or at least find some food to bring along, I was out the door.

Naturally, my car was almost out of gas. I always seem to decide “I’ll just gas up in the morning” on evenings preceding late-starting mornings. So I stopped at the Arco on my way. I pulled up to a vacant pump and saw that it had a large note in tiny print stuck on it, so I drove around to a different one. Turns out, they all had notes on them. The notes said, “Debit down, come inside.” I figured, no problem. I’ll just pay cash at the machine. This particular Arco has separate machines for paying with a card and paying with cash, and the cash machine also had a note on it that said “Out of service.”

So I went inside the Arco to stand in the crazy-long line of customers waiting for the one clerk who had to handle all of the gas purchases manually.

I finally got to the front of the line and swiped my debit card. I agreed to the 45-cent fee, entered my pin number, and approved the amount of the sale. Then I waited. And waited. Eventually, the clerk told me it didn’t go through and to swipe it again. So I did. And I again agreed to the 45-cent fee. Again entered my pin number, and again approved the amount of the sale. And I waited again.

This time, the clerk told me that it would be about five minutes before he could run a debit card. Luckily, I remembered the cash on me and paid with that. He gave me my change in all nickels and pennies. By the time I left the counter, clutching five pounds of coins, the line was stretching well out of the door, thanks to my delay.

By now, it was so late in the morning that I decided I’d miss all the bad traffic.

Nope.

I got stuck behind a guy going 25 miles per hour on the speedway, and everyone else was zooming around me at land speed records, so I just had to stay put.

On I-5, I passed a stalled car in the center lane, an accident off to the right side, and an ecology crew in day-glo orange vests, all of which made traffic crawl. It’s not every day you see such fascinating attractions on the freeway, so we all had to slow down for gawking.

I finally arrived at work sometime between 9:30 and 10, feeling sheepish that I was so late.

But it’s all good, because my supervisor rolled in around 10:30.