Practicing My T's: New Activity-Ignore Times Where Road Range Should Emerge

September 10^th: Ignore the rage. 

When someone is in a car with me, there are some things he will immediately notice:

1.       I try not to do a lot of eating while driving, although I will have something on hand to drink to keep me hydrated.

2.       Unless I have my hands free device on me, I will not pick up my phone.  If my Bluetooth or headset isn’t already in my ear or if I don’t have my speakerphone device activated, I will not pick up.  Even if the same person calls several times.

3.       I do enjoy playing music but I don’t play it overly loud, not to where another person can hear me before I even go  up the block.

4.       I turn down the music when I’m parking or when I’m close to a destination I am not familiar with.

But most, and certainly not least…

5.       It is very rare that I road rage.  Actually, any passenger who rides in my car tends to have more road rage than I do.

There have been instances where a car has cut me off, and my passenger has reached over to honk the horn, curse the person out, or flip them off.  Then, will look at me as if to say, “That doesn’t bother you?”  

Well, it does.

However, there is one instance where I have had trouble tuning down the instinct to go HAM, and that’s when someone is about to side swipe me or rear end me.  That sets me off to no end.  Simply because I don’t have as much control over the situation, and I hate that. 

Like about a month ago, when a person was merging into my right lane, and no matter how loud I honked the horn, she didn’t see me (because she was talking on her cell phone).  Plus, I didn’t have an option to even get off the road.  It was only when another person also honked that she jerked her way back into the other lane.  And in the end, she didn’t really need to be in my lane, anyway.

I was irate and very tempted to follow her down Route 1 to give her what for.  My whole entire body was shaking with rage.

Then, around that same time frame, there was a jam near the Route 1 circle.  New Jersey is pretty famous for having you do circles to get to certain roads (I think my GPS affectionately refers to them as roundabouts).  

Well, I was proceeding to my part of the circle but had to slow down because of the congestion.  The person behind me, busy texting on her cell phone, wasn’t paying attention to the slow down and almost rear ended me, and in trying to avoid rear ending me, almost hit the other person making his way through the circle.

After getting off the day gig, everyone must have been in a hurry.  When one is in a hurry, you don’t take as much caution, and there were a lot of instances where the same type of rage I felt towards those inattentive people behind the wheel on their cell phones was tempted to bubble up and flow like a volcano.

But this time around, I ignored it.

I ignored one of my co-workers who went flying into the parking lot as I had signaled and was already halfway out to the street.  He honked and gave me the finger.

I ignored the person who cut in front of me who realized almost too late that she was in the wrong lane.

I ignored the truck that saw me signal to merge onto the highway, yet decided to speed up because he didn’t want me in front of him, and the four additional people who did the same thing.

I even didn’t put up a fuss when I was all set to pull into a parking space at Wal-Mart and another person pulled in and took it, although there were three other spots closer than my spot.

(patting myself on the back )

Although if I had a passenger in the seat with me, I think he would have channeled my inner rage quite effectively.

Peace.