I like to read. Always have. My eyesight isn’t what it once was, so I find I need more light to read than I used to. So these days, I take a good book along with me while I’m on the highway … that way, when some ass clown comes along and gets right behind me with his high beams in full effect, I can whip out that novel and read it cover to cover. Until I smash into something, of course.

I always thought I understood high beams. There are roads throughout this great land of ours that, for one reason or another, don’t have any sort of illumination. When one finds oneself on a road like that, one turns on the old high beams to get a better look at what’s ahead. Then when they’re not needed anymore, off they go.

I also seem to recall something about high beams from Driver’s Ed. Something about turning them off as you pass another car, and the driver of the other car doing you the same courtesy. Hmmm … nah, I must have dreamed that.

People, turn off your goddamned high beams. Whatever it is you’re looking for, I’ll see it first, and I swear on a stack of Bibles I’ll call you on your cell phone and tell you all about it. (See? See how I knew that the ass clowns who drive with their high beams on are the same ass clowns who talk on their cell phones while they drive? More on that aspect of ass clownery in a future lesson.)

I suppose there could be a small percentage of people who have their high beams on and aren’t aware of it. The same ones who are still signaling for a left turn three and a half hours after they took it. For those people, I offer up this tidbit: if it’s nighttime, and from your car you can read which scent of “Candle in a Jar” air freshener I’ve got dangling, you’ve got too many lumens burning. Cut it down by half, if you don’t mind.

And for you bugfuckers who think it’s funny to ride up on my bumper with your headlamps melting the metal of my trunk lid, I’m warning you: I’ve got a large-print volume of Shakespeare’s greatest works. I’ll hold it up and you’ll be able to read it as clear as day.

And then, God help us, you might learn something.

© 2004 Crankypants