I feel unsafe in many places. I felt unsafe away at school, with roommates who regularly took dumps on my privacy. I feel unsafe in crowded areas, like concerts, or standing in a Starbucks line after the schools let out. It turns out that as an aging woman, it’s apparently normal to feel threatened by watching stick-thin 15-year-olds slurp down a venti caramel dolce Frappuccino.
Yet out of all these stressors of daily life, the one that terrifies me the most? Driving. One of the scariest parts of being behind the wheel is that death lays around every corner. All it takes is one Mumford & Sons song to come on shuffle and suddenly your Jeep is now balls deep inside the Escalade in front of you.
The only thing that’s scarier than death? Road rage.
Road rage can turn any person into a certified psychopath -- or just bring out the psychopath that’s been waiting patiently inside of us to come out, like the contents of our bowels after starting the morning off with some Dunkin.
We’re all guilty of it, and most of the time it’s harmless, a simple honk or a casual middle finger. But these signs of violence can escalate quicker than you could ever imagine.
After being tailgated while trying to parallel park on my apartment’s designated side street, I successfully pulled to the side to let the car go past me. Instead of going past me, he parked next to me on the one-way road, rolled down his window exclaiming, “you almost rammed the hell out of me!”
In the only way I know how -- the Jersey way-slash-why god why are you doing this to me -- exclaimed back, “I’m parking so you could go the fuck around me!” The 60-year-old man picked up his WOODEN PIPE, (giving you this moment to imagine a man in 2017 smoking a wooden pipe in his Toyota) got out of his car, walked outside my driver’s side window, pointed at me, and yelled, “someone needs to teach you about being polite, girl!”
What to do if this happens to you: Call the police. Or, at least type 9-1-1 into your phone and show the harasser through the rolled-up window with the doors locked. Take down the car’s license plate number and do not get out of your car. Assess the situation to the best of your ability; if the person harassing you is persistent, do not hesitate to call the police.
Only a week after I was flipped off and honked at by a Jon Gosselin look alike in an orange Charger for cutting across the mall parking lot to come out nowhere near this guy’s car. His premature anger angered me, to which I yelled fuck off through an unknowingly open window. You know, the Jersey way.
This non-situation quickly escalated when I parked, began to cry, and was shocked when Jon Gosselin in a backwards Zoo York hat and Oakley sunglasses appeared at my driver’s side window, screaming and pointing at me inside my car.
I consider myself a good driver, which is why I’m having immense trouble making sense of the two grown men that took it upon themselves to get out of their car, come up to my driver’s side window, and scream profanities at me, a 20-year-old woman.
Do not be modest. Be loud. Stand up for yourself. And if by doing these three things you find that grown men are so intimidated by you that they try to physically assert their rage onto those undeserving, then take the steps you need to stay safe.
