School-zone vigilante

Now I know we've all had our moments of spaciness in school zones where we've gone faster than we should have. Two close friends have even gotten speeding tickets in school zones for just such offenses. I can forgive being a harried and hurried parent taking kids to school, provided you don't make a habit of it.

What I can't tolerate is those who think the school zone doesn't apply to them because they are too important to slow down and watch out for little kids. This morning I exacted my vengeance on just such a woman.

Our neighborhood has a pretty wide main drag - one way on each side of an arroyo (dry ditch in Spanish). Each side is wide, but it's not two lanes, not even close.

I was tooling along, heading to school with the girls, going the regular speed limit, when this woman blew up behind me and almost rear-ended me. She stopped short but continued to drive right on my rear bumper. After about 100 feet of this, we hit the school zone, so I slowed down even further. She crawled further up my back bumper. Then she started swerving from side to side to try and pass me - passing on the right in a school zone! So I moved to the center of the lane and held my ground. I could see her yelling at me in the rear-view mirror.

I made her even angrier when I stopped to let a whole group of kids cross in the crosswalk, which is the law, by the way. She nearly ran into my bumper again, stopping just in time to sit there and seethe.

Once we started moving again, she turned off on a side street, squealing her tires as she went.

I know it was petty of me to act like that. But honestly, how much of a hurry to you have to be in to deliberately speed in a school zone? How much of a self-important jerk do you have to be to assume that the school zone doesn't apply to you?

Of course, having written this, I'm going to space out tomorrow morning and get busted for it.