Highway Freaks

On the way home from Jackson tonight, something odd happened.  I was flying down the interstate as usual listening to my iPod, thoughts rambling idly over the events of the conference I'd left behind not long before.  It was dark, and I was both passing vehicles and being passed depending on the different speeds we all were traveling.  I was somewhere deep in Bienville National Forest where the exits are few and far between when the idiot in the Suburban pulled up behind me.

He came flying up fast while I was pulled out to pass something else, and I pulled in to let him by.  He zipped past and pulled in ahead of me.  Then he slowed way down.  This happens.  People don't use cruise control.  They get a phone call.  They suddenly realize they are driving at a ridiculous speed.  Whatever.  I pulled out and went to pass him. 

He sped up. 

I used the might and power of my four cylinder engine and got around him.  By this point, I was doing about 80.  I don't usually drive that fast unless I'm having a bad day and am listening to loud rock.  It was night, I was in deer country, and the only angry I was was at the weirdo in the truck.

A few minutes later, he came slowly cruising up around me again, lingering in the passing lane.  I slowed down some, hoping he'd just go.  Again, he pulled in ahead of me and slowed down.  I slowed down, too, intending to force him to go on, but he kept losing speed.  I pulled out to pass, and he started accelerating again, keeping pace with me as I steadily went faster and faster. 

I redlined it, hit 85 or 90 and fled.  He dropped back for awhile, but I slowed down after a few miles, and next thing I knew he was right back in my rear view mirror on my bumper.  I called home at that point because I felt like I needed to tell somebody something.  It was creeping me out.  I felt like I was trapped in a TV show or a melodramatic novel.  I was about a minute away from calling the Highway Patrol when I saw the lights of a major exit I knew up ahead. 

There was also finally another vehicle around us, an eighteen-wheeler, and I stuck my little Cruiser to the back of it like a scared kitten to its mother until I could take the exit.  The Suburban stayed behind me until the last minute, and then it pulled around the truck and went on.  I sat at a gas station at that exit for awhile, just trying to get my nerve back before I came the rest of the way home. 

I've never had anything like that happen to me before.  The plates on the vehicle, what little of them I saw, were in state, and fairly local.  The whole thing made me wish I was driving my dad's huge four-wheel drive Dodge so I could have just been like, "Keep screwing with me, buddy.  I will just freakin' drive over you."  I hope I never go through any more interstate fun like that again.