A Field Guide To Highway Drivers

A guide to help identify, classify, and aid in the avoidance

of various species of motor vehicle operators

Greetings, fellow commuters! It is indeed an adventure to traverse America's interstate highway system. Perhaps you've identified patterns of behavior among different groups of drivers as you've made your way along the great concrete ribbon. They can be amusing, bewildering, annoying, or outright terrifying. And yet, there has never been a guide that categorized these behaviors.

Until today.

Not long ago, due to a job change, my commute extended from a mere twenty-minute hop to a full one-hour odyssey between major cities. A sensible man night have packed up his belongings and moved nearer to his new job. Alas, I happen to like living where I am, so I've consigned myself to two hours of commuting each day.

This extended bit of travel time has allowed me to observe my fellow drivers in different environments. When I began commuting, my daily trip was nearly all Interstate. Early on I noticed a striking similarity of commuters' driving habits to those of NASCAR drivers. One car follows another incredibly closely, as if drafting. Another makes a sudden charge, breaking free of the pack and screaming down the off-ramp like Dale Jr. charging for the Finish Line. As I traveled the Interstate, I observed that the only things differentiating the real race cars from those being driven as such were safety gear and a lot of really cool decals.

Thankfully, before the red flag came out, my company moved its offices to a new building. I began scouting new routes to work, settling on one that leads me down two fairly-quiet two-lane highways, giving me only the briefest of intervals on the Interstate. However, since the behaviors are more pronounced on four-lane divided highways, I'll confine my discussion to that environment.

To begin, here are a few terms I've developed to differentiate between various species of drivers:

Doofus: Doofuses are divided into two categories. Slow-lane Doofuses drive significantly below the "speed limit," which is a suggested rate of speed for the travel lane and is actually observed by some drivers. They drive slowly when there is no apparent reason to do so. Fast-lane Doofuses are those who dare to travel at less than 80 miles per hour in the passing lane.

Moron: Morons closely follow Fast-lane Doofuses, usually at a distance of less than 75 inches from the Doofus's bumper.

Jerk: Typically an aggressive Moron. These are usually easy to spot by their use of flashing lights, horns, and hand signals. Less common are the Passive Jerks, usually found in the right lane paralleling an on-ramp. Passive Jerks refuse to move into the passing lane to let entering traffic in for any reason. They are highly sought by operators of charter bus lines.

Each of the above may be classified as Leading, Trailing, or Lateral, depending upon its relative position to one's vehicle. There is no iron-clad rule linking membership in any of the aforementioned species to the size, weight, or horsepower of the vehicle driven by that member. However, some do exhibit dominant traits. Slow-lane Doofuses are frequently found in large trucks, earth-toned four-door sedans, or older imports in need of hospice care. Jerks occasionally show up in very large trucks, although they tend toward larger automobiles and SUVs. The last point is especially noteworthy. The size of the vehicle driven by a Jerk seems to be inversely propotionate to the size of the motorist. Thus, a petite woman in an Escalade and a linebacker in a Crown Victoria can exhibit equivalent Jerk tendencies.

Doofuses, Morons, and Jerks tend to travel in packs. Packs are differentiated by vehicle size:

Trains: A Train is a group of three or more cars driven by Morons, usually led by a Fast-lane Doofus. Trains can appear at any time of day but are most often observed during high-density morning-travel hours. A Doofus enters the passing lane and is joined in short order by a number of Morons. The Train will travel at well above the average traffic rate, compressing slightly as Morons edge closer together. Occasionally a Moron in a Train will tap his brakes a little too hard, creating a Traffic Advisory (not described herein).

Walls: Walls consist of four or more 18-wheelers driven by Slow-lane Doofuses. The trucks travel so closely together that one can't duck in between them to avoid being run down by a Moron, Jerk or Train.

The ranks of each of the species can swell or recede from the population of average drivers. A slight bit of inattention while passing slower traffic can instantly leap an average driver into the ranks of Leading Fast-Lane Doofuses. Spontaneous inter-species mutations are also common. Inobservance of slower traffic ahead may move a driver, one who was barely passable as a Lateral Moron seconds before, directly to the Jerk family. And his mother, too.

There is one trait that is common to all species: Territorial Possessiveness. It is seen in Lateral Passive Jerks, Leading Doofuses, and Morons of all classes. It is the unshakable belief that one's territory extends to The Whole Freakin' Road and one may do exactly as one pleases on the real estate he occupies. Frequent territorial disputes break out as Trailing Jerks crowd nearby Fast-lane Doofuses or Morons; occasionally a Jerk will actually attempt to hammer through a hapless Moron, particularly when the two are in a Train next to a Wall. In rare instances this causes the Moron to attempt an "Ohshdijouseethat," the highly-dangerous but exciting act of forcibly extracting one's vehicle from a Train and racing for a nearby off-ramp while attempting to pass through a Wall.

You'll undoubtedly observe other interesting behaviors among the local driver species of your area. You may want to start a Life List, similar to those used by birdwatchers, to record the antics and activities abundant in your local area. You may even discover a yet-undocumented driver species. Please feel free to use this Field Guide to begin your new hobby. Happy Watching, and by all means drive carefully.

Tuesday was a big day for me. In addition to my dad's turning 75, it was also the one-year anniversary of my last chemotherapy session. I was originally scheduled to have six rounds, with one round coming every three weeks. With a few bumps in the road and a regimen change, it stretched out to eight rounds and I finished about two months later than we'd planned. Still, when the choices are an uncertain course or certain death, I'll take the uncertain course every time.

Doctors found my cancer in October of 2005. I went to my doctor with some abdominal pain and weight loss, and after a few tests I got a phone call. The caller said, "stop what you're doing and go to the hospital right now." The call came on a Friday afternoon, and it really messed up my weekend. Instead of getting my yard ready for winter I lay in a hospital bed getting pumped full of IV antibiotics.  The following Monday I had surgery to remove a bowel obstruction and a tumor of unknown origin that was about the size of my fist. After a few days of what my life would be like if I turned it over to the Marx Brothers, the word came back from Pathology. The obstruction was non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and the tumor was an extragonadal seminoma. That fancy medical phrase means I had testicular cancer but not in the usual spot.

I started chemo on November 1, 2005. According to my oncologist, my particular combination of malignancies made developing a treatment plan a challenge. After consulting with some colleagues at Indiana University he came up with one. It's called RICE, and it's a combination of four different drugs: Rituxan, Ifosfamide, Carboplatin, and Etoposide. For some reason I could remember the names of all the drugs except Carboplatin; all I could think of was "Clopinhead." That's about what it felt like about three weeks after the first round. I was in the shower washing my hair, and it came out! I had a heck of a time rinsing off, as each time I ducked my head and rubbed the suds off, more hair fell out. Thankfully, it didn't all fall out at once; I had some time to adjust to the idea that I'd be bald for the duration. I ran around with the "mangy dog" look for about three more weeks and when I couldn't take looking like Homer Simpson anymore, I buzzed what little hair remained.

I could have taken one of two attitudes with the loss of my hair. Option one was to wail and moan about losing my beautiful blonde hair, poor me, and boo-hoo-hoo. That didn't appeal to me. I chose instead to hope that the chemo was doing the same thing to those damn cancer cells!

One of chemotherapy's drawbacks is that in addition to killing off cancer cells, it also kills blood cells and plays havoc with your immune system. One day at the office I got a call from Marilyn, who I'm sure is an angel cleverly disguised as an oncology nurse. She told me my latest blood test showed a white count of 1.2; normal is in a range between four and twelve. In short, I had no immune system and would not do well hanging around a cubicle farm where sniffles and sneezes pass around regularly in big, germy waves. Doctor's orders were to go home and stay there until my white cells were back over 2.0. Thankfully, someone at our office (and I won't tell the suits who, ever!) bent the rules and got me access so I could continue to work from the very computer I'm writing this on. Being able to dial in was an enormous help to me, as I'd burned up all my sick days and the remainder of the year's vacation back in October. The drawback was, even though I was home I still had to work! While I was able to access everything that was on my work PC and the network, I had to do it at 56k. The software I use at work is very graphics-intensive, and sometimes it crawled like a wooly-bear caterpillar at dial-up speeds. I developed a routine that served me quite well while I was a shut-in. Click the mouse, go get some coffee. Drag the icon, go get a cookie.

One particular day close to Christmas, I couldn't take being confined to quarters anymore. I had shopping to do, and the only way I could do it was to wear a germ mask when I left the house. I felt ridiculously conspicuous, going out with my face covered and my scalp naked, but Christmas was coming and and I had things to do. As I parked my truck in the lot, I had to laugh at the headline that could have come from someone seeng a bald guy in a mask and getting the wrong idea: "ELMER FUDD STICKS UP STORE!"

Things fell into a regular pattern for the next several weeks. I'd get well enough to go to work, have a chemo session, get a blood draw ten days later, and work from home until I'd recouped again. Early in January I had a PET scan. I thought a PET scan was like a CAT scan but just covered more species. The two are similar; in both you get put through a machine that looks like a big donut and takes x-rays all the way around your body. However, for a PET scan you get pumped full of IV fluid and radioactive sugar. Cancer cells love sugar, and that's their downfall (as it is mine). They uptake the radioactive glucose and get caught in the scan. I had a PET scan before I started chemo, and it showed I was a mess. I had things showing up in my liver, spleen, one lung, and in my mediastinum (the cavity where your heart lives). My oncologist told me I was at stage four; there are only four stages. But he also told me that what I had was highly treatable and he mentioned the word "curable." I held on to that hope like a lover.

A few days later the results of the PET scan showed up at the cancer center. I saw them at my next chemo session. Never in my life was I so happy to be described as "grossly unremarkable!" There was no sign of any active mailgnancy; I had a few calcified lymph nodes and some granulated remains in my liver, but at that point nothing grew in me that wasn't supposed to! I thought I was done early, but the doc had other ideas. There would be no more RICE for me; from now on the treatment of choice was CHOP. It seemed like a wonderful thing. I'd only have to go for chemo one day a week instead of three, and the treatments wouldn't last as long. The only drawback was one of the side effects of CHOP: Chemotherapy-induced neuropathy. For several months, even after the end of chemo, my fingers and toes were completely numb. It was just the wrong thing for a person who earns his keep by pounding on a keyboard.

Slowly, my life returned to normal. The days I worked from home grew further apart. Until I'd been deprived of it, I had no idea how I cherished socializing with my co-workers at the office. Spring came, and shortly after my last chemo I felt good enough to go outside and tune up the lawn tractor. I had the radio on in my truck while I fiddled away in the tool shed. That particular evening was also the first time I heard the song "Skin" by Rascal Flatts: I cried like a little girl.

It's now been one year since I sat in a recliner and got pumped full of incredibly strong and outrageously expensive drugs. I only got sick enough to hurl one time. Eventually my hair grew back and my hands stopped tingling. In late June I was well enough to travel to Florida for our son's wedding. The endless days of captivity are just a memory. I'm actually healthy enough now to be ornery about each morning's hour-long commute to work. But in truth each day I'm oriented portrait instead of landscape is a blessing, and I'm grateful for each one. I'm especially thankful for all the people who prayed and cheered me on during that long, slow healing process. Particularly Carolyn, who has her own health troubles but was there to keep me company even when it meant long hours of sitting in an uncomfortable commercial-design chair.

My oncologist declared me to be in remission in May of 2006; my plan is to stay there. Strangely, even though I'm always grateful for another day of breathing, sometimes I feel guilty. I'm still here, but some of the people I shared treatment rooms with aren't. Ray would talk forever about his grandkids and all the stuff he had for them at his house and how he loved to see those kids enjoy it all. Ernie made it to ninety before his cancer finally beat him. I'm still here, and they're not. All the stuff in Ray's garage won't bring him back for his grandkids, and not one of those fancy toys can replace him for them. One wonders: Why am I still here and not them? How should I carry on to honor their memory? What's expected of me now? My obligation now is to encourage and strengthen the ones who are still in the fight. I have to tell them it's beatable. My job is to show them that maybe they can still be around for their families. And especially to tell them that nobody walks through cancer alone. I was surrounded by family, friends, co-workers...people I didn't even know prayed for me to get better. I was at Stage Four and I'm still here; prayer really does work!

That said, I still have occasional down days. A dark companion visits me now. It shows up with every strange stomach gurgle and every twinge of pain in the places where my cancer grew. It's fear. It's that little heart-stutter that makes me wonder...is it back? Is it worse this time? Can I beat it again? Last year I lost a testicle when a neoplasm, or a group of pre-cancerous abnormal cells, showed up on a scan. Not long after that I had a CAT scan, and my oncologist told me I had some swollen lymph nodes in my abdomen. They eventually receded and the problem went away, but the news scared the hell out of me.

As a boy, for some reason I was a bully magnet. I got pushed around on a regular basis until one day I fought back. I'm fighting back against this dark bully, too. I get checkups every six weeks to two months, and a CAT scan before every-other appointment. This year I'm a team captain for the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life, a 24-hour fun-and-fundraising event. While it raises funds, it also raises awareness about how to prevent cancer, shows the benefits of early detection, and provides support from one survivor to another. Relay teams can sell little purple paper feet for a buck each. Every one of them I sell is a stomp against cancer. That's where I need to be. If I'm on life-support, I want to be the one providing it. God was gracious enough to give me back my health. I need to use that health to help people that don't have theirs back yet. Cancer better just watch out...Ter is back.

So many things seem like good ideas at their beginnings. Wallpapering the kitchen. Taking a fifty-mile bicycle trip. Writing a weekly blog post. Going on a diet. I've done the first two without suffering any lasting damage and am just starting the second pair. So far, the blog post hasn't been too much of a strain. But the diet...what was I thinking??

I conceived the idea after a reunion with some high-school friends. The 33 years since Graduation Day have been kinder to some of us than others, but the skinny kids we once were have all been replaced by tubby middle-aged men. In fact, between the four of us we've gained enough blubber to build a fifth member of the group. We all, in turn, bemoaned the passing of our svelte selves. And then the idea came to me: We'll all go on a diet together! We could all encourage each other, and just to sweeten the deal, the guy who loses the most weight will receive a nice steak dinner, paid for by the other three. It seemed like a perfect plan. The desire to outstrip the others would surely drive each of us to do our best to pare off the poundage. We all agreed to weigh ourselves on Saturday morning and report our findings to the group. Dutifully I did so, confident that in early July I'll be enjoying a medium T-bone and a pile of steak fries, courtesy of my pals.

Defeating the candy machine in the office kitchen was easy. Each day I carefully left the house without enough change to buy my mid-afternoon snack. As I walked past the machine to get to the coffee pot I could hear the siren song of the chocolate and caramel: "Terrrr-ry! We're heeeeere! Come get us! We're deliiiiiicious!!" "Not this time," I thought. "I've got a major steak in my future."

Then my wife discovered a terrific recipe for chocolate-chip cookies with pecans. Chewy, but with just the right amount of firmness. I tried resisting them; my resolve lasted for all of three seconds. Crossing the kitchen at no more than twice my normal pace, I grabbed a handful of the still-warm bundles of joy. I had the other hand in the cupboard reaching for the perfect cookie-dunking glass when my bulbous belly brushed the countertop.

"No," I said to myself. "I won't eat those cookies." Had I remembered an early psychology lesson I would have phrased that sentence differently. According to Denis Waitley, the mind can't hold the negative image of an idea. Thus, when I thought "I won't eat those cookies," the two-word negative phrase "I won't" was immediately truncated; all that remained was "EAT THOSE COOKIES!" And so I did. Fortunately some small seed of self-control blew in from somewhere; there are still cookies in the jar, which I would not have guaranteed would be true had you asked me about them that evening.

The same thing happened later that week. My wife went to a meeting so I was on my own to forage for dinner. As I drove home from work I remembered a bag of lettuce in the fridge which, when combined with some thin-sliced ham and some lowfat cheese and dressing, would have made a perfectly good late-evening meal. As I approached a certain fast-food restaurant I fantasized about a nice big baked potato with bacon and cheese. I savored the idea of gobbling the cheese, the kind that goes straight to your coronary arteries. "That's not what I need right now," I thought as I changed lanes. Once again, the negative "That's not" dropped off and all my mind heard was "WHAT I NEED RIGHT NOW." I came to my senses holding an empty shake cup, with bits of bacon on my shirt.

Friday dawned, and with it the realization that the next day I would report my new weight to the guys. About then I found that one part of me had not changed at all since high school: I still waited until a project was due and then threw something together at the last minute and hoped for a miracle. I had a bowl of soup for lunch and a Caesar salad with a diet pop for dinner. "There," I thought, "that should clean the tarnish off my halo."

Saturday morning, before breakfast, I stripped to my shorts and t-shirt (it's not a pretty picture, don't attempt it) and stepped on the scale. The dial spun up madly; I held my breath, partly out of fear and partly because it was the only way to hold my gut in. The dial started back down, oscillated madly for a second, and then came to rest...on 225. I was up one pound for the week!

Glumly I stepped off the scale, remembering another lesson from ninth grade: If you goof off and then try to cram at the last minute your grade will be far less than desirable.

So today I resolve to start fresh. The weather's warming up so doing yard work and walking will be much more appealing. And I think I'll carry salad fixings for lunch. Things will be different this week; I won't keep gorging myself.

You know those annoying letters people send at Christmastime?  Here's one of ours.  (The names have been changed to protect the innocent.) 

 Dear Friends And Rellies:

Well this year has flown by so fast! I can't believe it's time to start putting the family's Christmas letter together. It's been a pretty exciting year for the Hooligans. My job as an itinerant systems analyst has been going real well. I had an eleven-week vacation this summer that was kind of fun, except of course there was that no-money thing again. One day while I was off work I told Mother that maybe I could start an e-mail chain letter where everybody who gets it would send a dollar to the person who sent it and we could get rich that way. The only thing that was holding me back was coming up with a good name. She suggested "Spamway" and I figured if she wasn't going to take it seriously I'd best just let the matter drop.

Mother and I had a real exciting night out not long ago. We bought one of those two-for-one coupon books from one of the kids at church and one Friday I was feeling flush so we decided to give it a try. We got all dolled up and hopped in the pickup. It was all spiffed up too, having just been freshly washed and waxed and vacuumed, so we were feeling quite posh as we rolled up to a Chinese restaurant in the city. Unfortunately the place had gone under, so we looked and found a coupon for a nearby Mexican restaurant. I started to get an idea that maybe the coupon book people had been a little optimistic, as the Mexican restaurant had gone out of business too! I felt kind of bad for Mother, as she'd been looking forward to getting off the farm for a night. We drove back toward home and I had an eye toward heading over to the Arby's drive-thru but my stomach was grumbling and it was getting late so I told Mother to look in that coupon book and see if there was anything for an eatery near where we were. Well she spotted one for a place we'd never been before and we were both hungry enough for an adventure so we pulled up to a bistro called the Nina Lou. I thought "Nina Lou" sounded like the name of a boat and so I reckoned the place would have kind of a nautical theme.

Well we went in and I saw right away if the Nina Lou had a nautical theme it was Early Shipwreck. It was dark and kind of run down, and there were some forlorn people who looked like survivors huddled around a bar in the middle of the room. They all stopped talking when we walked in and looked us both up and down! Well maybe they'd never seen two folks all gussied up like we were, and I feared they might have been embarrassed for us, being out of place and all, so I thought maybe we'd just ask for directions to the Interstate and head back the way we came. But Mother said no, we came all this way and we had a two-for-one coupon and Darn if we were going to let it go to waste. So I said all right, all right and we sat down in a booth. Mother seemed to take to the place right away but it put me in mind of a made-for-TV movie I saw once where a gang of motorcycle thugs rode up to a diner, beat up a fellow that was minding his own business and made off with his wife. Well I wasn't looking forward to a beating and I knew I'd miss Mother something fierce for a while, so I was just as glad when the only other folks that came in were a couple of guys from the factory across the road and their wives. The truth be told, the food was pretty good and the waitress was kind of cute, so maybe it wasn't such a bad place after all. But I was just as glad to pay our bill and be on our way. Those folks were awful put out that we showed them up, even though they tried to cover it up with a lot of loud talk and raucous laughter.

Mother herself has had a banner year. That guard job at the bank never did pan out, but she discovered that she has a knack for writing. She wrote an article about "Triumphing Over Chronic Pain" that was picked up by the journal of the Eureka Pain Management Clinic and Natural Stimulant Company of Tittabawassee. I asked her from where she drew her broad knowledge of pain that doesn't go away and she said that I was her inspiration. Isn't that the sweetest thing? I said that I would try to keep her supplied with material for her articles. She said she was counting on it.

She's also still got that volunteer job with the Boy Scouts, which she's taken right to heart. She even went along when the boys in the troop built trout habitats in a stream as a project for a young fellow who's working on Eagle Scout. I was busted out with pride the way she got right in and hiked along that swampy stream bank with the best of them. She was only discomfited once, when one of the younger boys caught a garter snake and showed it to her. He figured her for more of a naturalist than she is, and he seemed to think if he held it up right close she'd be able to identify it more easily. Well to her credit, Mother didn't let out a scream. She did make a kind of a high-pitched sound, almost a whistle, and Darn if it didn't set off that snake and the little bugger clamped down on the bridge of her glasses! Needless to say, Mother got downright set off too! The two of them pitched and whirled through the underbrush for a ways until that poor snake had had enough and unclamped himself. Some of the boys found it later, wrapped around a small poplar tree like a Caduceus. They wanted to keep it but I said no, he's had enough excitement for one day. The whole episode ended happily, as the boys not only will have nice places to take their kids fishing at in the years to come, but now there's also a nice trail blazed back to it.

Junior was home with us for a while earlier this year. That apartment he had last winter was awful nice but it kind of lost its lustre when his buddies moved out after the fire so he let it go. He changed schools over the summer and now he's in Florida where he can follow both of his dreams, to study pre-med and hone his heavy-equipment operating skills year-round. He got to his new school just in time for the hurricane season and not long after wrote home that he'd seen his first alligator on the road. That boy just is not "detail-oriented!" If I'd seen an alligator on the road I'd at least have taken note of what it was driving. But being young he didn't think to look real close. I think maybe it was just a Tail Gator.

A lot of folks have been asking after Grandpa and I'm pleased to report that things are looking up for the old gentleman. He had a colonoscopy a while back and the doctor said there was no sign of brain damage that he could see. I'm just not sure what some people think they see when they look at Grandpa. At his age I can understand him seeing things that aren't there but I don't have an explanation for everybody else. So let's just get any confusion cleared up. Grandpa still has a pretty good mane of white hair. I looked in a bird guide and found that buzzards are mostly bald-headed. Although he does hunch over a bit more than he used to, so maybe that's what's confusing folks.

I could go on and on about all the blessings that the Good Lord saw fit to bestow on us this year but I don't want to start bragging lest our less pious friends would think that we have an inside track to the Heavenlies. So I'll just wish everyone Happy Holidays. Bye for now, and save for your old age!

Seasons Greetings,

The Hooligans

Hi, I'm Buddy Ter.  That's a name that my friend Bob hung on my a good long time ago when we were members of the never-to-be-discovered rock band Batwipe and the Dead Fish.  This blog represents what may be a Quixotic adventure on my part:  to write a weekly column.  For many years I've wanted to "be a writer."  Over the years I've produced some fairly comical pieces for various occasions, and I have some very kind friends who wait eagerly for my annual Christmas Letter.  But I've never challenged myself to write a substantial amount of quality work on a regular basis. 

You might wonder who I am and why you'd care to read anything I care to write.  I was wondering that myself.  Mostly the latter; it's pretty rare that I forget who I am.  I'm a 51-year-old software developer, a husband, father of one son, father-in-law of the world's most beautiful daughter-in-law; a cancer survivor, a marginally-talented drummer, an organist of almost that much prowess, and an Assistant Scoutmaster.  I was the Scoutmaster of the local troop for about three years.  I found that if you can take twenty or so adolescent boys armed with knives, axes, and fire into the woods for a week and bring back them out relatively-unscathed, you can handle pretty much anything.  I'm hoping that my half-century of hanging around will have supplied my with enough experience and observational talent that I can see the funny side of things.

So here goes.  I'll write about what interests me at the moment.  It could be a story of the misadventures of the two nasty old cats that inhabit my house, or musings on the joys of making music, or maybe I'll whine about my problems.  Oh, I've got problems.  Biiiiig problems.  Terrrrrible problems!!  But I doubt I'll get into them very much; if I traded problems with you, I'd probably want mine back before long.  And who wants to hear about problems anyway?  When someone approaches me and starts to drone away with their latest heartache I start looking for a way to slip quietly behind the wallpaper, and I don't want anyone risking full-body paper cuts in an effort to escape me!

Just to get things rolling, I'll post a copy of one of the aforementioned Christmas letters.  If you enjoy it, come back next week.  And if you don't, thanks for coming by.