I was facing one of the uglier driving challenges in Sacramento: at the beginning of Folsom Blvd., the street doglegs through an intersection and narrows from two lanes to one. This is happening in both directions, as one side gives its lane up to the other side. Needless to say, this makes this particular intersection a little hairy when the light goes green and everyone jockeys for position.

It was a sunny day and I was sitting in my 1979 Toyota Celica at that particular intersection right on the line, staring down a red light. Now, that particular car wasn't exactly a speed demon but it did have some serious low end pickup. I looked over to the car next to me to see who my opponent was going to be and saw a nice looking elderly couple.

The man was driving in this case, and he had a late-80s American sedan--big, bulky, handles like a hippo. A nice cushy ride, but not exactly a sports car. I looked at the car, looked at the driver and thought "I can take this old guy".

That was when everything changed.

The old guy leaned over to look past his wife at me, and the look he gave me still chills me. It was that wiley old guy look. You know what I'm talking about: that look that says "I've been around the block, and I may be old, but it doesn't mean that I'm slow".

I'm familiar with this look. I have a great-uncle, Uncle Jim. Jim has been a salesman for years, still owns his own cutlery distributorship into his late seventies. Jim once screwed used car mogul Cal Worthington but good. In his 60s, he decided that he was going to convert part of his distributor warehouse into a house--and never mind the building permits. After he took off his index finger with a table saw during this construction we figured that would be the end of that nonsense. He got back to work on it the day he got back from the hospital (and his greatest regret was that he didn't end up needing the piece that had cost him his finger). After he was done doing that, he decided to take up flying. Jim is a wiley old dude.

Our family had a number of older family friends who are equally wicked well into the age that most people start settling down. I always loved these old guys, but secretly knew that perhaps the only thing keeping them from being completely dangerous was the fact that they had mellowed with age. And they all gave the look from time to time.

The look told me everything I needed to know. The evil gleam in his eye was joined by a not-quite-beatific half-smile as he sat back in his seat and waited for the light to turn green--he and I both knew who was going to come out ahead through the intersection, and it wasn't going to be the little sporty car with the good pickup. It was going to be the crafty old man and his enormous block of American iron.

I didn't even have a chance.