Road Rage

I was the subject of someone else's raod rage this morning.

I was on my way to work.  I pulled up to a 4-way stop sign slightly before a man in a VW Passat on my left.  Apparently he thought that he should have the right of way, because when I pulled forward into the intersection, he slammed his foot on the gas to get into the intersection and then on the brake to avoid T-boning me.  He honked the horn and gesticulated - and I responded with my own gesticulation of preference and then drove away, thinking it was over and done with.

Not so.  I pulled into a gas station to get my usual morning crappucino (as I do so on a daily basis), and he pulled in after me.  He parked his car next to my truck, got out, and started screaming at me about how I didn't stop at all and what a fucking bitch I was and how I should get out of my car so he could settle the argument.

I didn't get out.  I wanted to; there was a police car in the parking lot and I could really have used the officer's assistance, but I wasn't about to take the risk of getting my ass beat by a full grown man.  So, I pulled out of the parking lot and drove up the street towards my patient's home.  The local police station is a block away from where they live and I had it in my head that if this maniac followed me I'd park outside the PD and lay on the horn until someone came out to help me. 

I glanced in my mirror as I  was pulling away from the gas station, and saw that the man was pulling out into traffic 2 cars behind me.  I sped up and made a left into a side street, then a quick right into another, smaller street, drove a block and a half and looked into my rearview mirror again, expecting to see him right on my tail......

...but he was gone. 

I want to be all tough and full of bravado and tell you that I wasn't afraid, but I can't do that.  I WAS afraid.  I was shaking and crying like a little girl; I haven't been that frightened in....well, a long time. 

If, by some strange chance of fate, the man who did this to me this morning is reading this, I have this to say to you: I hope that you're proud of yourself.  I hope that scaring me like that; that intimidating me the way you did made you feel like a big man.  You had NO right to try to threaten me like that - even if I HAD run that stop sign as you claim, did that give you the right to tell me you wanted to beat my ass?  No, it didn't.  It doesn't.  I wish that I'd had the opportunity to get your license plate number; I'd have taken it to the police and reported you for what you did.  The cops would have told you that same thing: even if I HAD cut you off, you had NO right to follow me and threaten me.  You made yourself the bad guy in the situation as soon as you did that.

I travel that same route to work every day, but I think I'm changing my routine tomorrow.  I'm taking an alternate route and I'm leaving at a different time.  Call me cowardly if you want to, but I don't want chance seeing that man again.

He scared me.  That hasn't happened in a long time.