WWJWD (What Would John Wayne Do?)

Back in the dark ages of my youth...I remember walking into the house one day and overhearing my Mom and Dad squabbling.

[Or more to the truth, I overheard Mom squabbling at my Daddy.]

I came through the door just in time to catch my Dad shooting the bird to Mom's retreating back. Finding his use of sign language interesting, I asked Daddy what it meant. He grinned sheepishly and told me the handsign meant 'rain on you'. I carefully tucked this wonderful new info into my fertile seven-year old brain and skipped merrily out of the room.

A few days later, my Daddy was in trouble again. I had been sent home with a note from my teacher, asking my parents to make sure I stop 'pointing my middle finger' at my classmates. I recall watching my Mama's face turn a deep shade of red when she read the teacher's note and then telling me I should never ever point my middle finger at anybody – EVER. She informed me that it did not mean 'rain on you', it meant something really naughty.

I learned two important lessons that day: 1) Daddy did not like being in the same room with Mom when her face was red, and 2) my middle finger was a powerful weapon.

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Last Wednesday I found myself in Memphis, Texas, sitting impatiently in line at the Sonic drive-thru. Yes, the same iconic Sonic that proudly displays a really bad statue of John Wayne sitting astride a horsey.

[Only in the Texas Panhandle, folks.]

There were two cars in front of me and two behind me. As the first car drove off with their food, the truck directly ahead of me pulled up to the pick-up window, while I rolled forward to place my order. As I was screaming loudly into the intercom, all of a sudden a lady driving a small red car came out of nowhere and cut right in between me and the truck.

At first I was simply confused. Then I decided that someone would only do such a thing if there was an emergency....

As I mulled over in my head just what might constitute a Sonic drive-thru emergency, I began to feel a knot of anger brewing just above my diaphraghm. Still, I wanted to give the lady the benefit of the doubt. I rolled down my window and leaned my ear out to listen.

“Can I help you?" asked the Sonic worker leaning thru the window.

“Yeah. I called-in my order and came to pick it up.” said the lady in the red car.

WHAT??!! As the ball of anger zoomed it's way up from my diaphragm through my esophagus and into my brain, it exploded into a million tiny pieces. All of them thoroughly pissed off.

Instantly, the Doucheous Maximus sitting in that red car ahead of me represented all the people in the world who have somehow concluded rules do not apply to them. Who no longer play nice and embrace rudeness as the new norm.

That lady in the red car became every single jerk who is so neurotically focused on themselves and their immediate needs that they resemble nothing so much as an egocentric nine month old.

I tried counting backwards from 100.

I tried to imagine WWJD.

It wasn't working. I realized the odds were increasing that my family would be watching my arrest on the 5:00 news...

But then...I suddenly caught a glimpse of John Wayne sitting astride his horse, and my mission was clear. As clear as ol' John Wayne's southern drawl playing loudly inside my head:

“A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.”

I first tried to make eye contact with the ridiculously rude woman sitting in the little red car ahead of me. I gave her the best stink eye I could muster, willing it to penetrate 20 feet away through tinted windows and blinding her through her rearview mirror.

The lady looked everywhere but back at me.

So I opened the door, got out of my car, and marched myself right up to her car window.

The lady glanced up surprisedly at me and I said, “I just want you to know that it was very RUDE of you to cut in line like that. Why is YOUR order so much more important than the three cars behind you?”

She had stopped looking at me by then, so I gave her one more parting shot: “You know what? I'm busy, too. And I really DO NOT appreciate this AT ALL.”

I went back to my car with a swagger that would do John Wayne proud and loudly slammed the door shut.

[I'm just mature that way.]

Still seething, I waited another ten minutes for the outlaw to get her order. About the time my cortisol levels reached maximal capacity, the woman finally got her food. As she pulled away from the window, I honked my horn and shot her another laser-focused stink eye.

[I'm just mature that way.]

I explained to the perplexed Sonic worker what had happened and she expressed shock that the woman had cut in line. “She most certainly did. Right in front of God and John Wayne, she whooped her car right on in front of me.”

The Sonic worker hurriedly took my money and pushed my Vanilla-Diet-DP-with-easy-ice-and-medium-sweet-potato-tots into my angry hands.

I managed to calm down long enough to eat my tots, then drove off to meet with my next patient.

As I pulled onto the town square, I'll be danged if I didn't find Lil' Miss Red Car coming my way.

And I did it.

Just like my Daddy taught me.

It.Felt.So.Good.

Rain on you, lady.

[I'm just mature that way.]