Sunday, October 14, 2007

Yet more evidence to support my theory: I will die in my car.

I was the victim of "road rage' the other day--and it was scary. It's alright, I'm okay and everything--but I was pretty shooken up. For a few minutes after it happened my hands were trembling like Britney before her morning cocktail and valium chaser.

Let me preface my "road rage" story by making the following admission: I, myself, am not the most patient, most defensive, least agressive or angry driver out there. I've been known to drop the F-bomb (attaching a YOU! to, as well as a rather redundant hand gesture as visual "back-up," in case they are out of range of my audio sentiment.)

However--I am not a complete asshole who looks for reasons to hurl expletives at innocent commuters who's only driving error was to have entered my "sphere of automotive influence."
I'm an agressive driver, I'll admit--but I'm also very careful and aware of my fellow commuters. I never block intersections or driveways when driving down gridlocked streets, I watch for cross-coming traffic and allow them room to get through rather than suffer my same paralytic-traffic fate, and I do not enter an intersection until I know I will be able to exit it.

Now, here's what happened. I was traveling eastbound on Washington Blvd. A massive, cream-colored, pre-millennium, Jackie-O era Cadillac with a 60-something-year-old caucasian (shocker!) douche-bag at the helm is blocking both eastbound lanes as he waits for the traffic to receed to the rather significant degree he needs in order to safely paddle his boat across to the other side. Since he's estimating this to be about 3 or 4 minutes and it's 3:55 pm in the afternoon on a Thursday in the county of Los Angeles--me and my fellow eastbound traveling motorists are fucked. I look at the man, shake my head and indicate my frustration by giving him the universal "are you fucking kidding me?" face and he replies, in kind, with the universal "Yeah, yeah, I see you, buddy." face. Well, after opportunity after opportunity came and went, I realized that he had lost the bold and reckless spirit he demonstrated in the moments before that got him where he is and that, having lost his nerve, he was now waiting for "the perfect storm" to occur, traffic-wise. He was waiting for two equally observant and sympathetic drivers traveling westbound on Washington to stop (even though there was no stop sign or traffic light at that intersection which requires them to do so, unless traffic becomes gridlocked--which it has not) to notice him in time to come to a complete stop (speed limit: 35 mph) and to risk being rear-ended by unsuspecting, motorists. I realized that he did not care that he was blocking myself and the dozens of cars that had by now stacked up behind me, many of them honking their horns in frustration. I, too, became increasingly angry and, emboldened by the growing crowd of fellow drivers who's travel plans were being needlessly thwarted by one selfish, stubborn, arrogant dickhead. I inched forward towards his driver's side door, my hand now pressed firmly down on my horn, the other hand motioning him to "Back Up or Move Forward--just GET OUT OF THE WAY!" The man, who had been keeping his head turned in the opposite direction from me--looking for the opening that it seemed would never come--suddenly spun around in my direction, his face twisted into a rictus of righteous indignance and wrinkled rage that will haunt my dreams... Then, before I could react (and even if i'd had time to react, what, I wonder, would I have done differently?) he opened his door, jumped out of his vehicle and in seconds, it seemed, was screaming--his face only inches away from mine--the following words: "Fuck you, you ugly fucking cunt! You stupid, ugly slut. I hope you fucking die, bitch!" I was so stunned, so scared and shocked I didn't even look over at him, I just kept my eyes straight ahead, praying to wake up, hoping I was only dreaming. Then, in my side view mirror, I can see the man in the car directly behind me getting out of his car, shouting and moving aggressively towards the old man who has, at this point, walked back over to his car. He guns his engine and nearly t-bones a woman in a Ford Explorer who manages to swerve out of his path as he finally crosses the street. The guy, my "knight in shining armor," walks up and asks if I'm okay--which was really sweet, god bless him, but I was in such a state of shock I couldn't do anything other than just nod hurriedly and indicate that I needed to drive and get out of everyone's way. I watched him getting smaller and smaller in my rear view mirror as he walked back to his car and got back in. Then, realizing that I was shaking violently, I turned onto a side street and took some deep breaths. I calmed down after a few minutes and got back on the road.

One thing that I forgot to mention that's kind of important is the fact that I have a convertible and one thing that ramped up the fear factor for me during this whole exchange was how vulnerable I was to this man. I suddenly realized that I couldn't do anything to really protect myself from him if he decided to physically assault me. Sure I could roll up my window, but he could easily just reach over the top of my window and throttle me if he felt like it. It freaked me out, realizing that as the man was hurtling towards me with this bloodthirsty, deranged look on his face. I'm serious, I though to myself--"Oh my god, this man is a fucking lunatic and he's going to strangle me to death right here in front of everybody, and all these people are going to be really inconvenienced and late for their appointments. This sucks." I always thought that I'd probably die in my car, but I never would have guessed this was how would go down.

2 comments:

ctrl-freak said...

Hm. I just hit this and already I'm interested. Gotsta get all the backstory.

btw, I'm from NY (originally) and you needn't apologize for your driving posture. Sounds healthy to me. Trust.

Keep on,
CF

ctrl-freak said...

Okay I've read it.

1 word: Baseball bat in backseat.

[well that's not 1 word, but you get me, right?] Seriously.