January 12, 2007

Confrontation

I started the confrontation with honorable intentions, but by the end, there was nothing honorable about it.

I had just left the gym, and was driving the thirsty SUV (with its thirsty TriJack and the two youngest of the troupe) down a 30 mph almost-residential street. And believe it or not, I actually was a tad under the posted speed, which is something of a rare occurrence for my fully leaded right foot...

So I'm driving along, minding my own, and this half bald guy sucking on a Camel in his VW passes me over the double yellows. What the...

Now admittedly I am a passive person, and I'd rather say to myself "what an idiot" than say it to the idiot under almost all conditions. But today, for some reason, I took action.

The pedal hit the floor and I hit 60 to catch him within about a minute, then followed the balding sloth through the neighborhood shopping village. I tailed him close enough to make sure he knew I was there, and I tried to look the menacing part of the bald headed (yea, I know, but mine is by choice) goatee'd guy I am.

Except I probably looked more like I was in pain than menacing, but hey, like I said, this is a rare thing for me and I frankly don't get much menacing-look practice...

Anyway, he stopped at a red light (shocker he didn't run the damn thing...) and, taking advantage of an empty left turn lane, I pulled up beside him. And then it was on...

Now I already had decided I was going to take the controlled, guilt-evoking format as opposed to the more-natural-for-me 4 letter tirade. And so it started,

"You know, sir [I actually said sir, believe it or not...], not only was passing me back there illegal but it's the same kind of thing the guy did that hit my brother head-on last year and killed him." A blatant lie, but it sounded good at the time, and quite frankly I'm not above a random lie here or there to a random person to make a good point.

"Well why don't you get off your phone and drive?"

Interesting response, especially since I wasn't on my phone until after he had passed me and I was passing along his tag number to Mt Brook police in hopes they would come give him a whopper of a ticket for something (God knows they've given me plenty for my overweight foot...)

By then, the light had turned green and the cars in front of him already had driven off, leaving us there to obstruct traffic.

"Sir, your light is green so you can go now, and unlike your pass back there that actually would not be illegal."

"Up yours."

At this point, the part of me that wanted to be controlled and guilt-evoking was gone, and the 4-letter tirade me was back.

I let loose a couple of choice phrases, mostly with regards to his sexual relationship with himself, as we both started to drive forward, and then it was over. Luckily, Anna and Aidan both had their headphones on listening to a movie, so they were oblivious to the proceedings.

So, what started honorably ended with me lying and cussing him out. Oh well, heh, it still made me feel pretty damn good!

3 comments:

Laurie said...

In my opinion, what you did was worse than what he did to ignite your fire. You're lucky it ended with just a few choice words.

SingletrackJenny (formerly known as IronJenny) said...

Buddy, BUDDY!!!! Are you out of your mind?????? That's like walking into a biker bar and screaming to Mr. Ginormous Hell's Angel dude, "hey, you've got a cheap ass girly bike and I think you look stupid".
You are darn lucky he did'nt shoot at you and accidentally get your kid. Could you ever live with that...
Slow down and stay as far away as possible from those types.... you are NOT ever in that big a hurry.
Having the right-of-way means nothing if your kid gets shot over it.
When I encounter those drivers, I stay away, let them do whatever it is they need to do, and mutter to myself, "oh they must be from out of town", or "it must really suck being him"... or whatever.

Stay alive out there. Your troupe needs you.

Jenny

TJ said...

I can relate. Same kind of thing burns me up and makes me want to react the same way you did. But, I've got to agree with Jenny and Laurie, you were definitely playing with fire.