Gospel

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Toll Booth Pranks & Salvation
By Dan Blankenship
© 2006 Dan Blankenship



About ten years ago, I developed a few toll booth pranks that were completely harmless and usually brightened the day of bored toll booth attendants throughout the Chicago-land area. After September 11, 2001, I no longer attempt any of these pranks for fear such shenanigans might bring about a Homeland Security visit to my humble domain.

I’m not sure where I came up with the idea for my first toll booth prank, so if there is a person who helped me with my devious creations, feel free to write me and demand credit where credit is due.

My first toll booth prank went like this: I pulled up to the toll booth attendant and politely asked her how much the toll was per axle.

She responded by telling me it was 15 cents per axle, and we owed 30 cents. I then asked her why it wasn’t more for the boat trailer.

Her reply as she looked to the back of our vehicle? “You all don’t have a boat trailer.”

About this time, our car load of family members would turn to look toward the back of the vehicle. We would then let out a few bloodcurdling screams before we told the toll booth attendant that we were just having some fun. Ninety-five percent of the attendants would thank us for adding a little excitement to their dreary day in their little box. The other five percent were not so enamored with our sketch.

Another totally harmless prank that toll booth attendants absolutely love is the “driver is blind” skit. Have the driver of the vehicle wear dark sunglasses – really dark and really big. As you approach the toll booth station, pretend to be telling the driver to move left, right, and when to stop. Next, reach across the “fake blind” driver’s lap and hand the toll booth attendant the toll money, commenting, “It’s much faster if I just hand you the change.”

Now most men and women inside the yellow box will bust out with laughter, but some have almost fainted from the “driver is blind” skit. And like I said earlier, ever since the Trade Towers fell, we no longer consider it wise to possibly shake-up workers that deal with the mass public.

There are quite a few more pranks that I had perfected, but there is one in particular that ended up teaching me a Biblical lesson that I have always felt the need to pass on to others.

“Paid in advance” was not much of a prank at all. It was more an act of kindness followed by what could be considered a little dangerous driving. I would pay the toll for the person behind my vehicle when I paid my own toll. Sometimes I would tell the attendant to wish the driver behind me happy birthday. Now of course it probably wasn’t the driver’s birthday, but I guess it could have been. Other times I wouldn’t give a reason I was paying the toll for the driver that was next in line.

Now after the driver behind me learned I had paid his toll, it usually became his mission to catch up with me and ask me – I guess through open windows, while flying down the expressway – why I had done such a thing. But part of the prank was to use creative driving (notice I avoided the word reckless) to ensure that the curious driver was never able to get side by side with my car. This did not always involve coming close to the speed limit (notice I avoided the word speeding). I actually used tricky lane changes (notice I did not use the word dangerous) to keep the “paid in advance” driver from finding out why I would do such a thing.

Today, there are probably hundreds of people who tell the story of the guy who, for apparently no reason at all, paid their highway toll.

Now it was not my plan to teach myself a lesson by creatively inventing the last toll booth prank that I just described. But I began to imagine how the driver whose toll I paid must have felt when he went to pay his own toll and found out someone had already paid. His surprise and bewilderment at the unexpected kindness and gift must have caused immense curiosity; and so he desired to learn more about the “who and why” behind the stranger in front of him.

In the gift of salvation God has offered mankind, there is no attempt by God (though there are often attempts by man) to evade explanation. God designed a way to spread His reasons for paying our toll that frees us from eternal death, and He included intimate details about the man he sent to pay that toll.

And, as the “Good News” of death’s defeat reaches around the globe, people can read, study, and see in other Heaven-bound individuals the unbelievable generosity that God’s Son made manifest in this fallen world.

People who come to accept the gift of eternal life, offered by the man in front of us at the toll booth of death, do not need to forever wonder about their debt-free gift and the man who delivered it. He has left us a legacy that has engulfed the planet with His fingerprints.

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