I was on my way home from a happy celebration—an 8th grade graduation of my former 2nd graders—so I was humming, smiling, and generally feeling positive about the world.
As I turned left into the parking lot of the grocery store to pick up some bread for dinner, I noticed a car jutting out from the parking lot into the left-hand lane. Luckily no traffic was coming in the other direction, so it wasn’t technically in the way. As I passed in front of the car, I turned to look at the driver. Although his window was up, I saw the rage in his eyes as he looked directly at me and formed the word bitch.
I clearly had the right-of-way—I was on the street and he was in the parking lot (at least halfway). I hadn’t been speeding or turning illegally. I hadn’t even given him a scolding look for blocking the other lane. (Honest!)
So presumably he was mad because he wanted to get somewhere and I was delaying him a few seconds just by my presence. Road rage rears its ugly head again.
Of course my patient, sympathetic husband said maybe his mom just died.
Hey, my mom died. It didn’t make me a rude or belligerent person.
I could just have well not even turned to see him, in which case I would never have known I was the object of his anger. It’s very possible that I have done so in the past, since I don’t make it a habit to look directly at other drivers on the road. (I do watch for pedestrians, stray dogs, and vehicles—just not the faces of other drivers.)
But I did see him.
Yeah, maybe he’d had a bad day. Maybe they were out of his favorite brand of beer or the cashier had been curt with him. Maybe he lost his job or had credit card debt. Maybe I even looked like his ex-wife who took him to the cleaners.
But I was not deserving of the raw hatred he spewed in my direction. So I made a conscious decision that this would not in any way lessen my lingering feelings of joy from seeing my students graduate. Whatever he was going through would not drag me down with him.
Perhaps that sounds callous. After all, he’s probably not a happy person. But what else can I do but ignore his actions? Or write about them…
The View from a Berkeley Optimist 
This husband of yours . . . sounds like an angel!
He is!
Well said, Tanya. The chances we will ever really know why someone shot us that nasty look, gave us the finger when we did nothing wrong, or why they felt the need to cut us off when they did. Personally, I’ve felt a build up of road rage ever since my husband and I were subject to a hit and run accident. That lack of closure has changed me immensely in four short years. It’s not a rage I direct toward others out of the blue, but rage I feel when someone takes their anger out on me on the road. The need for retaliation. Suddenly I’m a four year old behind the wheel of a car. Not good at all. ((sigh)).
Good job on the ‘writing about it!’ 🙂