I was driving out of our neighborhood last week, just another routine morning of adrenaline, caffeine, and a heavy foot on the accelerator, what with racing to get the kid up, racing to get him ready, racing to get him to school on time, then racing to get to work before anyone looked at their watch.

I was driving at an almost legal speed when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a vehicle approaching on a side street at a clip more appropriate for a straightaway at Talladega. When I looked in my rearview mirror, I discovered that that car had turned the corner and was buzzing behind me, throwing shadows on my rear bumper.

It was a Mercedes, that new model that I reckon is supposed to be something somewhere between a mini-van and an SUV. But if the thing didn’t have such a high price tag, folks might be more willing to admit that it looks less like the product of quality German engineering and design and more like some sort of gussied-up stink bug on the way to her very own shotgun wedding.

We'd gone a few blocks when the light in front of me turned red. It gave me the perfect oportunity to stop my car and turn around and look at that Mercedes, eyeball the driver, all in an effort to discern why in the hell she might think it appropriate, outside of having spent far more money on her vehicle than I did mine, to drive behind me so closely that we looked less like two members of a presumably civilized and industrialized society and more like two dogs who’d met at the park and she was trying to figure out what I’d eaten for dinner last night.

And then I saw that she, too, was dressed for work and that she, too, had a kid in the car. And that she, too, was likely pressed for time.

The light turned green and I turned left. So did she. And our rear-bumper-front-bumper relationship began again. But like any relationship, consensual or otherwise, there was trouble ahead. And this trouble came in the form of a tractor.

A tractor.

Going right through town.

In the morning rush.

When the rest of us are white-knuckling our ways to school, to work, cutting every corner and cheating every yellow light, just trying to get there on time, it’s a harder goal to accomplish when you get caught behind a tractor. Going right through town. In the morning rush.

Now I’ll admit, I can be a generous sort, even when I’m pressed for time. So I figured this ol’ feller was likely just moving his tractor from one field to the next. But he didn’t look so very old, and he didn’t look the sort to like being called a feller. And there were no fields around. None. We were, as any ol’ feller would say, uptown. No fields.

Besides, I’d seen this guy before. He wore the same hat, drove the same tractor (as if I might confuse one tractor with another going through town during morning rush hour). No, in spite of the fact that this is Alabama, most of us don’t parade our farm equipment through town like it was nothing other than a John Deere Camry.

And he did the same thing he’d done last time I saw him, just like you'd expect from an ol' feller going through town on his tractor. As if to make up for driving so slowly, making all of us late, he just smiled and waved in response to the honking horns and shaking fists and curses shouted through closed car windows. Because, this is Alabama, and if you just act kindly to one another, people don’t get nearly as upset when you make their kids late for school and get them fired for being late to work. Again.