Road rage: noun; violent anger caused by the stress and frustration involved in driving a motor vehicle. For some, road rage makes its appearance easier than others. Unfortunately, I’m one of those people. It was 5:30 on a Friday afternoon; prime time for rush hour traffic. It had also been one of the busiest days at work since the car dealership project had begun. I was beyond ready to go home, change into my sweatpants and watch 8 Mile for about the tenth time. However, even though I was exactly 8 miles from my house, it was about to take me half an hour to get home.
After a day filled with spreadsheets, bitching from subcontractors, and the disarrangement of my boss, anyone would be feeling a little stressed. The last thing I wanted to do was deal with incompetent individuals who didn’t know how to drive their cars. On top of it being rush hour combined with my office being directly off of route one, it started to rain. For some reason, even the smallest rain drop seems to erase all common sense from drivers. I gathered all my things from my office, made sure my computer and the lights were all turned off, and began to make my venture home.
I put on my favorite CD in an attempt to drown out the noise of my blinker which had been on for about five minutes now. Even the “click-clock sound of my blinker was beginning to irritate me at this point. Everyone was going a maximum speed of about 15mph, which confused me even more as to why they wouldn’t let me pull out. God forbid they become one more car behind on their race to the red light ¦. Finally, a middle-aged woman must have sensed the aggravation in my facial expression and flashed her lights signaling me to join her in the traffic jam.
Like predicted, it took me about ten minutes to go less than a mile. At this point, I don’t think there was anyone who wanted to make it home more than I did. After taking a look in my rearview mirror, I realized I was wrong. There was a silver Honda Accord coupe quickly approaching going about 50mph in the breakdown lane. Every part of me wanted to do the exact same thing that person was doing, except for the voice in my head telling me I had just gotten pulled over in the same spot about a week prior.
My luck, he’d get away with it and I’d be the one stuck explaining to the officer that I just really wanted my sweatpants. I envied this person until he got about 50 feet from my car and decided that he would attempt to squeeze in the half-car length space between me and the SUV in front of me. Then, the typical hand gestures began along with a few choice words for this impatient, pompous asshole. Both my hands flew up in the air, accompanied by non-intimidating car alarm.
The man then proceeded to flip me off and continued on his way. Most of the time in these types of situations I head home with no retaliation and try to take the mature route. Today was not that day. I rode his ass with my brights on for about a mile until I saw my exit about 100 feet ahead on the right. Still only traveling at about 20mph, I rolled down my window, gave the man a nice little bump with the left-front of my car into the right side of his rear-bumper, flipped him off and politely told him to enjoy his weekend.
