road rage

I generally wake up in the morning in an excellent mood.  I love mornings, and savor the stillness in those early hours.  I'm awake, alert, and ready to start my day.  I make my bed, shower, eat breakfast, pack my lunch, and I'm out the door by 7:00 - usually singing along to whatever is on the radio.  But some days, something happens when I step into my vehicle.  Today was one of those days.

As I stepped into the car and started my commute to work, I felt something start to boil.  I was using one of our State fleet cars, so maybe that was where things started to go south.  Nobody cleans these vehicles, and to say they are disgusting on the inside is a dramatic understatement.  As I write, I am realizing that this is most certainly where it began.  I was annoyed that I could not put my coffee in the cup holder for fear of coating the outside of my prized coffee mug in an unidentified sludge, so I had to hold in between my legs.

I pulled out of our road and headed toward Williston on Route 2A.  About a quarter of a mile down the road, they've installed one of those radar machines that obnoxiously flashes your current speed despite the fact that you have a spedometer 10 inches from your face.  Anyway - just before I reach this gadget, going the requisite 25 MPH, another motorist decides that despite the fact that there is nobody coming behind me, she has to pull out in front of me so close that I have to slam on my brakes.  So through no fault of my own, I am now tailgating this person.  I am actively slowing down to create a safe following distance, when I look up and see her frantically waving her arms and pointing at the speed gadget.  She is telling me to slow down, because the speed limit is 25 and I'm tailgating her.  And now I'm taking driving tips from someone who probably pays a premium in car insurance each month because of her inability to judge when to enter the main stream of traffic.  Lovely.

Eventually, Call Me Maybe came on the radio and all seemed right with the world once again.  The point is, some mornings it's okay to have a long commute to work, because you need that period of time to get all of your crazy out before stepping into a functional work environment.  I encourage you to practice road rage to a certain degree, and hope you will all join me in raising a collective "brake check" to the tailgaters.  Maybe they end up rear-ending you, but I'm certain the satisfaction of getting out and saying, "Well you probably shouldn't have been riding so close when that puppy ran out in the road, huh?"  will be well worth it.