Danged If I Do, Danged If I Don't

HEELLLP MEEEE!

Tuesday, Farmer H and I made a joint trip to the Devil's Playground. I was actually fool enough to suggest it! I had a hand in my own non-demise! I even decreed that I would be driving. No sweaving this time, with me as a captive passenger!

For the most part, Farmer H was a complacent companion. He started out giving T-Hoe's speedometer the side-eye. Not because there was anything wrong with my driving, of course. I'm pretty sure he was trying to find fault. It's not like I go off the pavement, or hit the wake-up bumps. He's always claiming that he's followed me, and that I drive too fast on the county road. Au contraire. I informed him, lest he strain his good eye, that "I'm going 45 miles an hour." He claims that I drive 55 on this road. Nope.

On the way home, on the sharp curve by the prison, I SPIED A ROADWALKER! Not an escaped prisoner or anything. He was coming from out our way, toward the prison. But he was WALKING ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD. On the pavement! There is no shoulder. No sidewalk. To add insult to my driving, and his possible injury, a car was coming from the opposite direction. I could not cross the center line to give the walker room to live!

I squeezed the brakes to slow down, so as not to strike this RoadWalker. Farmer H threw himself forward and slammed back. I'd almost give him an Oscar for his acting. Almost. He actually threw himself backwards while I was still braking. It doesn't work that way. That fling shouldn't have come until I stopped braking. I'm a former physics teacher, you know.

Anyhoo...the oncoming car passed, and I was able to swing T-Hoe over the center line to give the RoadWalker his very precious entitled space to continue to live.

"What? Did you want me to hit him? Don't be so dramatic."

I sensed a smirk in my peripheral vision. On we went, down the blacktop lettered highway, and made our turn onto the blacktop county road that would eventually take us to Mailbox Row. Here came a car from the other direction. There's not even a center line on this road. I made sure to get over so the car and T-Hoe both had room to pass.

Farmer H threw himself sideways like one of those air-pumped, Gumby-looking things that sway to and fro advertising used car lots.

"WHAT?"

"You almost hit that mailbox!"

"You're full of it. I'd have to run off the road to hit that mailbox. Did I run off the road? NO. I was nowhere near that mailbox. This road is barely wide enough for two cars, after all the times they re-blacktop, and squeeze in from the edge, making it narrower and narrower."

"I drive this road every day, HM."

"Me too. Have I EVER run off the road? NO. But somebody in here has..."

So let's recap. Farmer H didn't think I should have braked and gone around the RoadWalker. But he apparently thought I should brake, then swerve over the middle because of a mailbox not even in the road, but beside the pavement.

Farmer H can really be a horse's butt sometimes. All the time. I'm so used to it, his little act didn't even bother me. I was more bothered by the bad luck he brought me on my scratchers. And by his behavior at the mailboxes....

More on that tomorrow.