Big He-Man trucker

We finally got a day off. You have probably noticed that days off are typically referred to as if we haven’t had one in six months. Sometimes I think we could have three months off, drive 300 miles our first day back to work, then have the next day off and that day’s post would probably start “we finally have a day off…”

Anyway, I decided to take Maggie out to romp in the tiny strip of grass planted along the edge of the parking lot. She loves to get out and smell all the exciting new truck-stop smells and I like to wait until its the middle of the night so its too dark to see exactly what kind of nasty truck-stop parking lot shit it is that is getting her so excited. I’m a firm believer that its just better not to know some things.

It was 03:15 and the Petro parking lot was packed as you might imagine. We were over on the side where there is just room for one short pull-through row of trucks and Maggie was playing in the grass while I enjoyed a prohibited-in-the-truck-due-to-the-hideous-smell cigar. I realized that some numb-nuts had parked in the exit of this section of the parking lot, but it didn’t really affect me so… whatever.

Then some innocent driver pulled down into that section. I guess he was hoping there might be a parking spot down there at three o’clock in the morning… like yeah… and you also won the lottery, and that home-made tape you sent to ESPN worked and they are going to hire you to do the color commentary on Monday Night Football, and J-Lo thinks you’re hot…. But I guess hope springs eternal so there he came pulling in behind all these trucks and he couldn’t see that the exit was blocked by Mr. (or Ms) Numb-Nuts. Actually I guess it would have to be Mr. Numb-Nuts or Ms Numb-Ovaries. The point is that some jerk-ass of indeterminate gender pulled into the exit, set the brakes, and went to sleep.

So back to Innocent Driver… he gets down to the end of the row and sees the problem. There is a curb with a very steep bank of grass on one side and the Jerk on the other. There isn’t even enough room to get out if he were to jump up on the curb, which most drivers will tell you is sometimes the only way to make it out of a situation. After a few maneuvers, it became obvious to him that he couldn’t get out around the jerk so he started backing out of the area. This lady who was walking back to her truck was really nice and spotted him as he backed all the way out of that section of the parking lot.

He had no sooner thanked her and driven off when another truck started pulling into what was for the moment a box-canyon at the Petro. So the kindly lady stepped into his headlights and started waving her arms around in the air to get him to stop. (before you start thinking that secretly I was the kindly woman, let me assure you that I was simply standing over on the grass smoking my cigar and hoping the dog wasn’t eating some other dog’s poop) I was close enough to over-hear their conversation though:

“Hi driver, you don’t want to go down that way because you can’t get out,” said the kindly lady.

“Uh yeah. I can get out,” said the snot-nosed punk-assed driver of the truck.

“There’s a truck parked in the exit so you can’t get out,” saintly-tempered mystery lady.

“I been drivin a long time. I don’t need some woman trying to tell me how to drive this here truck. You want to see how a man does it you just stick around, honey,” mid-twenty-something-too-big-for-his-britches-jerk-ass.

And he roared ahead. The lady just stood there for a moment and stared after him before heading toward her own truck. Not me. I had to see this. I was 100% certain there was no way on this earth he could get out that exit and I wanted to enjoy his struggle. Also, he had to know I could hear his boasting to the saintly mystery lady and, although she had been the bigger person and gone on to her truck, I felt someone needed to go down there in an obvious location to laugh hysterically at him. I have never been a be-the-bigger-person kind of person in those situations.

So I pointed the pup in the direction of the dead-end and we walked along briskly which should be enough right there to let you know how interested I was in seeing what would play out. When we got to a prime viewing location, he was stopped assessing the situation. Then he saw me and I guess he suddenly felt his manhood was on the line. He decided to proceed against all commonsense. He roared forward. He jumped the curb. He crumpled his bumper. Smashed the crap out of it on the steep bank next to the curb. Oh my lord… I laughed so hard I thought I would wet my pants. Half the truck stop probably heard me. He certainly did.

So there he sat. Almost jack-knifed. Crumpled bumper. Still stuck. Hell I’m laughing now just thinking about it. He got out of that tractor cussing up a storm. Pounded on the cab of the driver blocking the exit and got him to move forward a few feet so he could finally get out.

Last thing he did while squeezing through the exit was fly me the bird.