The Bird Flies High

I always get onto Justin about being an aggressive driver.

He’ll take upon himself to “show” people how rude they are – some people call it road rage, I call it stupid, and tell him so anytime we are in the car.

It’s like this:

1. Don’t flash your brights when someone is going slow. Simply wade it out and go around them.
2. Don’t give someone the evil glare while waving your fist, they could pull a gun on you and kill your ass.
3. Don’t block others in the left lane from going fast because you think it is illegal. Let them pass, and I’m sure some happy state trooper will greet them further up the road.
4. While others do not understand the protected right on green concept, there is no need to honk at them until they do not take action for at least 15-20 seconds after the green light has occurred. After that, I polite tap of your horn with a friendly wave should let them know that “no hard feelings, but please go ahead and take that right. Thanks a bunch and peace and love and such!”

I try to live by these ideas, and others, when driving.

But there are occasions when I feel it necessary to “express” my frustrations driving.

Case in point: this evening, after a 10 minute discussion on why I would be the one to fetch the to-go order from Pei Wei. After a long day of work (seriously, LOOOONG) I didn’t feel like fetching the food. For Justin, hitting golf balls outside of his place of work and playing dodgeball in the cubicle area of his office equals extreme physical exhaustion.

Apparently mental exhaustion does not trump physical exhaustion, so I set out to pick up the food. On my way back, I decided to take 290 all the way to the main street to get to my neighborhood. It narrows down to one lane and there is always a back-up.

I do my part, and merge into the left lane with a reasonable amount of space left in front of me. After the lanes merge, I continue my decent off the highway and to the stoplight, only to look in my rearview mirror to see some a-hole barreling down the shoulder.

Sitting in this traffic for 10 minutes, smelling glorious Pei Wei must have pissed me off, because I flicked the guy off. Maybe this will shock some of you, but I had never flicked off another driver before.





Okay, I lie. I have flicked off other drivers before; however, I always did it under the window so they wouldn’t see me. (See point two above) I mean, I don’t even really honk at people unless the really, truly deserve to be honked at. (Reference point four)

So I’m feeling pretty good about myself, until I see the guy slow down and turn to park… and I’m like, “Oh, fudge.”

But it turns out he only parked at the range – the GUN RANGE! OMG! Okay, maybe I overreacted, but I mean, the guy really did have a gun in his car. He could have pulled his gun on me instead of taking out his aggression at the range. I mean, obviously this blog is one big overreaction to life, but seriously, guns scare the heck out of me!

In retrospect, he probably was going too fast to even see my “bird.” But I have learned a most valuable lesson.

My bird is flying back under the radar, err… window, from now on.