Last Tuesday night, I was driving home on Route 2, as usual. As is typical, it was pretty late at night, 11 PM or so.

Before I go on, let me hasten to point out that I did not learn to drive in Massachusetts. I learned to drive in a place where, on the highway, the left lane is the fast lane, and the right lane is the slow lane. Where I learned to drive, people getting on the road with a yield sign yield, unlike in Massachusetts where the people on the road are supposed to yield to the person with the yield sign, who is supposed to not even turn his head or look in the mirror to see if someone's about to hit him as he gets on the road. This, coupled with a peculiar Massachusetts fear of driving in the left lane which I don't understand the origin of, means that *everyone* wants to be in the middle lane.

*ahem* Enough ranting, or background information, however you want to take it.

Anyway, I was driving along in the middle lane at about 70 mph on a 55 mph road. I know this because I had the cruise control set. This minivan came zooming up behind me, and miraculously didn't tailgate me for a while before swerving over into the left lane, passing me at over 75, maybe closer to 80. This, of course, being not unusual (except for the lack of tailgateing), didn't cause me to blink an eye. Suddenly, however, the guy in the minivan hits his brakes and slows down really fast. Surprised, and assuming there was an obstacle somewhere, I cancelled the cruise control and peered ahead.

This is when I noticed the car ahead of me was a police car. By then the minivan had, of all things, turned on his right turn signal, but I was already at his bumper. Instead of cutting me off, he slowed down *even more* to let me pass, then swerved in RIGHT BEHIND ME.

Well, I say. That just screamed GUILTY, didn't it? Presently we'd pulled up fairly close to the police car, at which point I noticed that he was going about 50 mph, on a 55 mph road. So, I turned on my turn signal, like usual, got in the left lane, and passed the police car (going an obedient 55, of course :) ). Just after I'd finished passing the police car, the minivan driver realized that I didn't get pulled over instantly for driving past the police car in the left lane, so he pulled into the left lane and proceeded to tailgate me.

I signalled and got back into the middle lane a reasonable distance in front of the police car, and the minivan sped off at 75 again, right there in front of the police car.

Now, if the policeman was trying to pull someone over, this minivan guy was just being glaringly obviously guilty all around!

I hate driving in Massachusetts. It's always like this, though usually not quite with so many spectacular Massachusetts-isms committed right in a row by one person...

ahmo"it does get easier, though, when you've learned the unspoken rules"acah