Nathan Sheets - July 5th, 2008

I am a very laid back person, even while driving. Often times someone (from Washington, generally) will almost kill me on the road. Case in point: the other day, I was driving down Grand, which is four lanes of one way traffic. A car was crossing grand, and the driver was on his cellphone. I was the only care really, and so I though that he was going to inch out until I passed and then proceed on his way. No. He didn't see me, presumably because he was on his cell phone. It was scary. I was with someone, and they freaked out for a second.

But I don't get upset because I realize that this cell-phone using Washingtonian didn't mean to almost run into me, regardless of how stupid he was not to see the only care in sight. Perhaps he was chatting to his dying wife, as she lay on a mountain in Peru, just managing to drag out her satellite phone and call her husband to let him know that she had just fallen down and fatally hurt herself, and to please make sure Mittens gets fed. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

But it's another matter when people are being intentionally aggressive, or, as my internal dialogue refers to them as: douche bags.

Today I was driving down Burnside, which is always a trial because it takes forever once you get on the West side. There are many signals, and so it's kind of stop and go. Well, these signals change frequently, since we are downtown, and so I noted ahead of me that if I were to cross the intersection, I would be blocking the crosswalk. I then proceed to wait an entire ten seconds for a spot to clear up, grinning as I watch the lady behind me freak out--FREAK OUT--because I didn't cross. She then pulled to the side of me, with her window down, and we found ourselves at a red light. I SO wanted to shout, "I was stopping so I wouldn't get stuck in the middle of the intersection!" But I opted not to.

But my aggression did play out when, driving back in Milwaukie, DB#2 kept tailgating me. Now, frankly, I need a new care. Hell, even if she didn't have insurance, I'd be happy to have my car totaled to I'd have an excuse to stop paying for gas. This lady doesn't know that these are my thoughts, so, going down 32nd, I continually slam on my breaks. Again, my All-Seeing Rear-View Mirror shows me the hilarious scene occurring right behind me. This lady is flipping me the bird, banging on her steering wheel, and screaming at the top of her lungs. I continue to slam on my breaks whenever she gets too close (I was originally going 30 in a heavily-populated 25 zone, but of course after the first slam I decided to follow the law) and this provides me with 3/4 of a mile of comedy. I finally turn, and she got the last finger in (well, the only finger in since I didn't feel she was worth a finger of my own).

I understand how frustrating it is when people go slower than the speed limit, which I was not doing. But even if I were, why do people treat such an infraction as the equivalent to the Soviet threat? Do we show outrage over the children being killed every day in our country and outside? Do we care that our media treats women like pieces of meat? Or treat dads like expendable idiots? We can't think of those things now: the idiot in front of us is not going as fast as we'd like.

See, this is totally something I could see myself accidentally doing. I wonder what happened to "Mike".