Old Dude Gave Me The One-Finger Salute

By kiki

As I was driving down La Puente's Amar Road to my favorite greasy spoon joint for breakfast this morning, I came upon an old dude driving an old scraggly red Ford station wagon that looked like it had missed out on the Cash for Clunkers deal, down Amar Road. The dude had to have been  85 years old if he was a day old. Amar Road is a 40 mile per hour zone, and this old dude was doing about 20 miles per hour on the road's left lane with nobody in front of him. I followed him for about a quarter of a mile, and then I tooted my horn. He rolled down his window and put his arm straight up in the air, and with a shaky hand, he gave me the one-finger salute. I moved to the right lane as we were approaching a stoplight. 

He rolled his passenger side window down and started yelling and shaking his fist at me. I couldn't hear what he was saying because I was hard of hearing in my left ear. Connie says I only listen to what I want to hear. Maybe she is correct, but back to the old dude, I knew whatever he was yelling at me was nothing pleasant, so I told the old dude, "listen, I don't want to fight you, I just wanted you to move out of the way" When I told him that the feisty old dude dropped the "f" bomb on me, that I heard! As soon as the light turned green, I made my getaway, I didn't need to get my ass kicked, not that I didn't need an ass-kicking, but it was too early in the morning for that.

Sitting at the greasy spoon, I thought about what had just happened and started laughing because of an image that popped into my mind, an image of two old dudes, one in his mid-80's (him) and the other one (me) inching into the 80 range fighting on one of the main drags in La Puente. It would have been a funny sight, but not a pretty one…LOL!!!!