I went to the bank just now to cash a check. Much to my surprise, traffic on Vanderbilt was actually very light. Then again, I did go at 11:00 in the morning — a very light time for traffic historically. The trip was not entirely without idiocy, though.

On the way home, myself and a few other cars were following behind a slow-moving RollSecure hurricane shutter truck. As we approached our community, all of us (but the truck) peeled off into the left turn lane to enter the neighborhood. The truck continued on down the road. But then, literally right at the intersection to our community, the truck came to a dead stop in the only through traffic lane on Vanderbilt Road and put his signal on — oh, he wants to come into the community too! Just one question, though: WHERE THE HELL IS YOUR MIND? There is NOTHING else on the road out that far except for our community entrance. In fact our community occupies almost the entire length between two cross streets. Where did you think the entrance was? Mars?

Okay, so the truck screwed up. What really got me, though, was the old man in the typically boring-looking Honda Accord directly in front of me. He continued to drive up the left turn lane as if completely ignorant that the truck was up there ahead of him, wanting to get into the turn lane. The old dude wasn’t going to let the guy in, and actually laid on his nasally horn when the truck made the turn in front of him. Well, let’s see, Mr. Geriatric Patient: The truck was completely blocking eastbound traffic. Sure, it’s inconvenient, and the truck driver decided to cut you off instead of doing the responsible thing and turning around a ways up the road. But let’s look at the greater good here, shall we? All these other people can’t even go anywhere at all because you were in such a hurry to get to your damn community, you didn’t want to let the truck go in front of you. Gah…it’s the clash of idiots on a collision course!

All right. Maybe I do excessively psychoanalyze traffic patterns.