Road Rage and Short Stories

Don't you just love road trips?  I do!  Especially when the end result of such a trip is something really fun.  I went down to St. George, UT this weekend to see "Thriller" at the Tuacahn amphitheatre.  For anyone reading this who is not familiar with St. George, Thriller or Tuacahn - some brief explanations:

St. George - lovely little red-rocked town in Southern UT
"Thriller" - Halloween themed dance production by Odyssey Dance Company, Salt Lake City
Tuacahn - AMAZING outdoor amphitheatre near St. George - right smack in the middle of a red canyon, amazing acoustics, it's just awesome.

We went down just for one night - Me, my only daughter, my best friend Jen, and her youngest son, Nate.  It was a great show.  It was also a full moon that night - awesome to see peaking over the amphitheatre walls and adding to the ambiance of the Thriller theme.  The dancers were amazing.  I love this show!  I saw it in Salt Lake last year, but Tuacahn was just wonderful.

Anyhow!  As we were driving home yesterday, we decided to take a little detour (ok, so we got lost) and of course Jen and I are just chatting away, not really paying attention to the other drivers on the road.  There was only one vehicle in front of us and not too many cars coming the other way.  Well, at some point - the vehicle in front of us starts to tap his breaks and slow down.  We look up and see him madly thrashing his arms about and then he pulls to the side of the road.  As we pass him, he looks a little something like this:

*original artwork by Donea Lee

Even today, I have NO IDEA what we did to upset this guy.  But, we passed him and, of course, he started tail-gating and then finally passed us and flipped my friend off!!  I swear - we were not tail-gating him to begin with.  Anyhow - we found ourselves in Dixie National Forest - lots of twist and turns and I kept thinking to myself, "What if we turn a corner and that yellow Chevy is blocking the road and the psycho driving is outside waiting for us...with his gun...it is hunting season right now after all...plausible defense?"  Jen and I started hypothesizing different scenarios of what this guy might do to kill us.  (i.e. he road-blocks us and guns us down, he road-blocks us and uses his hidden machete and feeds us to the deer, we ram into him instead and stick antlers on him for the "road kill" defense, etc.)

"Psycho in the Yellow Truck."  Jen thinks it could be a song title.  Could that work as a novel?  I didn't think I'd have enough story fodder for something that long.  But, maybe a short story or a poem?  Has road rage ever given you a story idea?  :)