The Angriest Dumb Guy
3.26.7
I met the angriest dumb guy in the world over the weekend.
It was Saturday afternoon and I was heading down Parker Rd. on my way to pick up Autumn from work. Ahead of me and to the right was a maroon minivan in the merge lane. He certainly hadn't reached appropriate merging speeds yet, and his lane was getting pretty close to its end.
Being a defensive driver, I'm much more likely to slow down and let someone like this merge than to try and beat them. That's exactly what I did this time, too. It's the safest, most polite thing to do.
You know that thing where two people are walking towards each other, and they both move in the same direction to pass, only to find themselves still in the way, so both parties repeatedly attempt to correct the mistake, until after a few moments of unfortunate synchronicity, someone finally can't take it anymore and stops entirely?
First off, that thing really needs an official name. Currently, the only way to talk about that thing in conversation is to explain the whole thing in detail like I just did. In response, I propose the phrase: "social stall." It's short and simple...yet descriptive. (It also doesn't appear to be in use already as a Google search of the phrase only brings up 26 results.)
Anyway...
My attempt at being polite backfired when it turned into a giant social stall on wheels. For some reason, instead of merging in front of me after I slowed down, this man decided to also slow down. As we continued to approach the end of his lane, we both just kept slowing down until we were nearly at a dead stop.
It's hard to place blame in a situation like this, but I maintain that he was the biggest cause of all this ridiculousness. His car remained clearly ahead of mine the entire time, so his decision to continually attempt to slow down and merge behind me was silly to say the least.
Regardless...it got to a point where one of us simply had to go, and since there were cars now approaching from behind me, I decided to end the madness and hit the gas.
As I passed him, though, I heard the unmistakable sound of a car horn blaring. As the sound caught my ear, I turned to the right to see what the big fucking deal was. I can still see it all in vivid slow motion: Inside the minivan was your average minivan-driving middle-aged guy. His face, however, was screwed up into the snarling, frothing epitome of rage. The horn stopped, and both of his fists flew up in front of his face, middle fingers extended as far as he could get them. He held the double-fisted obscene gesture almost pressed against his windshield, as his hands shook wildly, trembling in anger.
At times in my life, I've momentarily forgotten that nearly every person I meet on the streets is bound to be a complete fucking moron...
This was one of those times.
In the heat of the moment, I quickly returned his completely uncalled for gesture. Then I continued driving, leaving him a memory in my rearview mirror. This is where the story would have ended if this man had been an intelligent human being.
Instead...his idiotic dispute with me picked up again around 30 seconds later, after he had weaved dangerously through plenty of traffic containing plenty of innocent men, women, and children.
For the next three miles, this complete piece of shit followed me, flipping me off. It was...perhaps one of the strangest usages of the middle finger I've ever seen. The middle finger is certainly great as a quick expression of negative feelings, but somewhere after the first minute of constantly displaying it...well, it starts to lose its effect.
Suddenly, I saw him making another sign:
I found out later that this is indeed a known hand symbol, but I had personally never seen it before that moment. I just watched in my rear view mirror, squinting at it, wondering what the hell he was trying say. It was almost like interpreting some kind of Neolithic ape language.
"It kinda looks like a vagina, maybe," I thought to myself. Almost as soon as the thought entered my mind, I noticed him intermittently pointing to the right, which confirmed for me that he was indeed trying to infer that I was a "pussy," and that he expected me to pull into some parking lot and physically fight him to prove that I wasn't one. I hadn't even been a victim of behavior this immature in high school...let alone as a grown-ass man.
It went on like this for several minutes, with him alternating between the finger, the kinda-vagina, and his suggestive points to the right. I honestly couldn't believe this was happening. I retraced my steps, and wondered how my foiled attempt at being nice had led me down this path. I was literally being followed by some violent sociopath who seemed to think that calling me a "pussy" would change the fact that I have better shit to do than be assaulted on a Saturday afternoon.
Eventually I turned north on I-25, he headed south, and the idiocy was over. As we forked away from each other, and his minivan headed into the distance, he just kept on flipping me off. I watched in disbelief shaking my head to myself. I almost wouldn't be surprised if right now, he were somewhere still flipping me off for good measure.
It was a relief to be away from him, though, because quite frankly, who knows what somebody that obviously unstable is going to do. The whole thing was a huge adrenaline rush, and it all left me a bit shaken.
I suppose he would think that makes me a "pussy." Of course, I personally think that any rational human being should be shaken by the fact that people like him even exist.
