Road Rage

I have road rage.  When I'm driving, people irritate the hell out of me.  Are you going the speed limit or less?  You can bet I'm cursing you out as I plod along behind you.  No turn signal?  I will probably be shaking my fist at you and calling you an asshole.  Are you up my ass in your big SUV?  I will flip you the bird as I hit my brakes to go even slower, just to piss you off.

I know my road rage isn't a good thing, but I've seen worse.  Some people are really freaking crazy.  My actions are tame compared to some of the crap I've seen people do behind the wheel.  Like the time some guy took offense that my dad and I made a right turn into the parking lot before he made his left.  Yeah, we had right of way, but he didn't see it that way.  He leaned on his horn, got up our ass, and followed us until we parked.  Then he blocked us in.  We ended up having to call the police because we were afraid to get out of the car.  Really dude?  We were in a parking lot.  At an outlet mall.  Chill the hell out.

Or the time my boyfriend pissed off some guy in the Toys R Us parking lot.  He cut us off, my boyfriend honked, so he followed us and he parked next to us.  I was really pregnant with Princess at the time.  The guy got out of the car and started screaming at us and wanted to fight my boyfriend.  Oh yeah, and his toddler was in the backseat, terrified and sobbing hysterically.  I ended up getting out of the car and giving him a piece of my mind about how unfit of a father he was to act like that in front of his son.  It is not appropriate to tell a 20 year old to stop being a pussy and get out of the car so you can kick his ass when you're in your mid-40s and your son is watching.  I got him to drive away by threatening to call CPS on him.

Then there was the guy on the Thruway when we were driving home from my Oma's funeral.  The boyfriend was driving with me, my sister, and her boyfriend as passengers.  Some guy cut us off and we almost crashed.  So he honked at him.  The guy slowed down and we passed him.  Then he tried to sweve into us on purpose.  It was scary.  He started following us.  He would tailgate us, then switch lanes, pass us, and cut us off.    We got off the next exit, which wasn't ours, and he followed us.  I had to call 911.  By the time the state police caught up to us, we had driven about 20 miles out of our way and into NJ from NY, with this guy following us the whole time.  When he finally got pulled over, he told the police we followed him and he feared for his life.  Really?  I was hysterical when the trooper came to talk to us.  I had just buried my Oma and some crazy guy was trying to run my car off the road.  It was not a pretty scene, but the guy got a ticket or something.  I almost pressed charges, but I was too stressed out with everything else going on.

So now, I carry a beating stick in my car.  Yeah, you heard right.  It was actually my Oma's.  She kept it in her car in case of trouble (my Oma was an old-school German woman and she was no joke!)  My beating stick is a 2 foot long, 3" across piece of wood wrapped in black tape.  I thankfully haven't had to use it yet, but I've learned it is better to be safe than sorry, because some people are really crazy, and the littlest things can set them off.  And I'm going to make sure I can at least attempt to protect myself.