Oh sure, I see you in your little Twingo, your left indicator light blinking, showing that you’d like to merge in front of me. Nope, not today man. If I let you merge in front of me, the next thing is you’ll be trying to sleep with my wife.
Let me tell you something: just because the roads in Luxembourg are paved with high-quality asphalt and we’re all driving nice cars with rear parking sensors and GPS doesn’t mean that these city streets aren’t the jungle. Kindness has no place here. Have you ever seen a nature documentary where there’s a herd of gazelles running, and then one stops to let another pass in front? Of course not. Then it’d be in the back and a lion would tear its head off, and after that the lion would go find the gazelle’s mate and have his way with her.
I don’t know where you’re from — well okay, I do, because it says so on your license plate — but in these parts, we don’t like guys in cars trying to push their way in front of us. I may have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night. Suppose I do let you in. You’re going to think: there’s a man who’s a real pushover, a weakling, a beta male, so I’m going to find out where he lives and try to sleep with his wife.
Go find some other schmuck driver to let you ruin his marriage, his life and that of his kids. I’m sticking to my ground. I will not cede a single centimeter for you to slip your way in.
Oh, how touching, a faux desperate expression on your face, your hands pressed together like a monk begging for alms for the poor. No way. I know your type. Just like my colleague that one time, the one whose name I won’t mention. We both needed to use the office toilet, but he said it was an emergency. So I let him go first, and when I came out after finishing my business, he’s not at his desk, nowhere to be found. Vanished. So I call my wife and guess who she says just showed up at the door? Yup, my colleague, that sneaky bastard.
Or that other time, for instance, with that old man who cut in front of me at the boulangerie. Did I try to stop him? No, he looked 95 years old and he was using a walker. But I should have stopped him. Next thing I knew, I caught him sneaking around my house when I wasn’t there, trying to get into bed with my wife.
So you can stay there all day, with your melodramatic appeals for mercy. Sure, go on, draw my attention to the fact there’s a woman in the back seat of your car. And what? Oh, she’s pregnant and minutes from giving birth? Yeah, right. What’d you do, stuff a basketball under her shirt, cover her face with a liquid resembling sweat, and give her orders to wail like a banshee? Nice try. No way.
The answer is no. I’m not letting you merge in front of me. Find some other fool.
The author works in Luxembourg and can be observed in the mornings and evenings invariably denying other drivers the opportunity to merge in front of him.
