I drove home from work today without my carpool buddy. Interestingly, it's when he's not here that things get interesting.

Perhaps it's because without his extra set of eyes, the chances of something unpredictably happening increases. [Insert joke about my driving here].

The situation occurred when was pulling out from my office complex's entranceway and onto Fourteenth Avenue which (at least on the stretch my office) is not too busy in terms of traffic.

As I tried to make a left and merge onto Fourteenth Avenue, I miscalculated the rather close distance between my car and the oncoming motorcycle rider, and I only I realized this after executing the turn. To prevent a possible collision, I decided to "backpeddle" by essentially merging onto the road in the lane of the opposite direction. Thus, my car was situated on the westbound lanes when my car is travelling eastbound.

The motorcyclist passed me without incident. Given the scorching heat these past days, I had my windows completely down, and I heard the motorcycle rider mutter faint words of discontent, but I did catch a few F sounds.

Fair enough, I was clearly not in my game.

Of course, just my luck, there was a red light at the following intersection. He queues at the left turn lane, and I was going straight. Because of my obvious shame, I was desperately hoping that the advance left turn signal would illuminate so that I don't have to encounter him face-to-face, or in this instance, side-to-side.

As my luck would have it, there was no change in traffic signals.

As I queued right next him, and I thought, "Well, if I actually have to encounter him, I thought the best thing to do was simply to acknowledge my fault. It's the only way to promote rage-less driving."

So I peered my head out and intended to give him an acknowledgment wave, a slight nod, and smile, as a sign of "no hard feelings."

But of course, nothing ever goes right with me, and my acknowledgment wave became more of a salute, which in retrospect was a bit confusing.

Maybe he thought I meant to be confrontational?

After my salute, I brought my head back into the vehicle.

"You're pretty fucking brave to pull out in front of a motorcycle like that, you know that?" he said as he took pivoted his helmet visor to reveal a handsome olive complexion with sparking eyes radiating off the reflection of sunlight from my car.

I paused for a moment not really thinking about his handsomeness, but my fear that he might prompt verbal (or worse physical) abuse against me.

I peered my head out of the window again, hoping to clear up my intentions. I told him in a stern tone, "I apologize. I know it wasn't cool of me to pull out from there like that."

"You apologize? Ok then. Have a nice day." I later noticed him smile.

Very startled, I thought, "What? A civilized, polite reponse? No snarky comment?"

I nodded with my mouth slightly open, still in awe of his response. My feelings moved away from fear and towards attraction-- I was moving up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

The advanced left turn signal illuminated and he was on his way. As he turned, he tilted his head down, leaned to the right towards me, and gave me a wave as he zoomed away.

It's probably my unhealthy intrigue of chick flicks but was this my suburban fairy tale? Hatred for each other turns to love?

Maybe it's a stretch.

I felt like having a Dentyne Ice gum, fogging up the window, and inscribe my number on it.

A boy can only dream no?