I had a recent road rage incident which involved me flipping off some dude who tried to cut me off at a stop sign. Pretty routine, right? (Especially since, “Horn broke (sic, sic, sic) watch for finger” is not just a bumper sticker but a reality for me). Wrong. It turns out that this is a really, REALLY bad idea when, one, your destination is actually about 25 feet from the original incident, and two, the object of one’s wrath actually has significantly more extreme rage issues than oneself. Which is impressive, given that “oneself” refers to me. I’m working on it. Really.
Apparently flipping me the bird in return like a normal angry human being was not sufficient for this verbose gentleman, who spent the next few minutes shouting the usual obscenities at me (you know, “fuck you, you bitch”) interspersed with him saying that he was going to call the police, apparently because he violated my right of way; or because I flipped him off. It was never made clear which egregious offense he thought the police would be interested in.
I would like to say here that I was completely unfazed and didn’t respond to him. At all. That would have been smart, right? Not exactly true, unfortunately. I’m pretty sure there is some law that allows me to avoid self-incrimination, so I won’t say exactly what happened, but let’s just say that, upon hearing a certain four-letter word beginning with “c” (which may or may not sort of rhyme with “dismemberment”. Okay, it doesn’t really rhyme, but it shares the same final letters. Hush) issuing from the frothing lips of this madman, someone, who may or may not have been me, may or may not have temporarily misplaced his or her temper and may or may not have, uh, briefly exerted manual force on the offending gentleman’s car window before recalling that some people have guns, and this mad motorist seemed to be a likely candidate and perhaps DEATH was not a desirable outcome at this juncture. Upon this realisation, someone found it wisest to walk (NOT run – too wimpy) away and avoid further altercation.
Question: is it Vehicular Assault to punch a car? If so, does the vehicle have to testify as the victim? I imagine that would be exhausting.
I apologise.
Apparently, Angry Driver Who Was Angry With Much Anger was NOT bluffing and did in fact call the police. The cop, however, did not even bother talking to me, he just drove off after making the other driver leave. Apparently, Mr. Road Rage was crazy enough that his crazy completely dwarfed mine, swallowed it whole and called it a four letter “c” word that was not “clam”. Lucky me.
The incident taught me a valuable lesson, though, which is: Do Not Provoke Others Unless You Can Be Absolutely Certain That You Are the Crazier One. I have yet to develop a foolproof way of determining this scale, since my previous rule was simply “don’t get into altercations in a WalMart parking lot” which was pretty easy to uphold since I have successfully boycotted WalMart for a number of years. Clearly, though, my anti-road-rage prevention needed to be ramped-up, and I thus decided to fight terror with terror and PROVE that I was the baddest, craziest MoFo around by invading Iraq because, of course, they (or some other rag-head-looking people group, god, they all look alike) had bombed the World Trade Center, which was, of course, instigated by me metaphorically flipping them off (AKA “installing corrupt governments in their countries, bombing their children, and exploiting their resources”) for years now and… Oh, I’m sorry, that’s a line from my upcoming book called America: Yes, We’re Assholes, But That Doesn’t Mean You Get To Attack Us. Geezus. Calm the Fuck Down. Incidentally, Calm the Fuck Down will also be the title of my semi-autobiographical self-help book for dealing with severe anger issues. (Whew! We’re back on track again!)
My new plan for dealing with road rage involves breathing deeply, NOT flipping anyone off (it’s been two days, guys!!), and a new technique I invented called Articulately-Infantalising Road Rage, which is a bunch of fancy-sounding words I just strung together incoherently. What this means is that Instead of immediately spewing obscenities at the other driver who so grossly offended me, I now address them as if I were gently chiding the misbehaviour of a slightly stupid child: “Now, Muffin, [using slightly derogatory terms of endearment is an excellent start] I know it can be SO HARD sometimes to remember to Wait Your Turn, but you must be patient, Sweetums, and try, oh, just TRY to remember to Take Turns and Share, mmkay, Muffle-umps?” Usually, by the time I have finished this imagined conversation I’m not even angry anymore. Who could stay mad at a child? Especially a stupid one?