Of Mergers and Maniacs!!

I was driving in a particularly hairy construction zone last week and found myself noticing that there are two kinds of mergers, creepers and gunners.

Let me explain.  Creepers have the considerate or conflict averse personality.  They know the merge is coming so about a half a mile away they carefully switch into the lane that will go through and creep along towards the dreaded merge.  The large majority of us are creepers(I know! Doesn’t that sound like we’re zombies or something:) That’s why traffic in the designated creeper line always backs up.

Within the creepers, there are two different types, the patient creepers and the incredibly indignant creepers. 

The patient creeper is far more rare a species. They give everyone the benefit of the doubt. When Gunners try to push their way in just before the merger they have thoughts like “The other driver must not have known about the merge or surely they have a sick grandmother in their car and they are trying to get her to the hospital.”

Usually, this type of creeper will let three or four people go in front of them, making  the indignant creepers behind them grumble in their cars. 

My last sentence pretty much sums up the indignant creepers.
They do the right thing, get over and wait, but criticize everyone else who doesn’t. If complaining were fuel, they could run their cars on it!

Now onto the gunners! Again, there are two types. I call them the DUH gunners and the I’m-the-only-one-in-the-world- and-the-roads-were-made-just-for-me-gunners.  Yeah, the last one is a mouthful. 

The duh-gunners. What can I say, their distracted, disjointed, and dumb.  The other ones (I’m not writing out that name again) really believe that they should not be forced to wait, that they are exempt from general courtesy, and that Darwin was describing them when he talked about survival of the fittest…them being the fittest of course.

So there they are, the two kinds of mergers. The question is ARE YOU A CREEPER OR A GUNNER? I’m not telling you which one I am:) Thanks for stopping by!