It's hot, everyone is uncomfortable - especially me. I drive a very old car - it's an '89 and has lots of great features I love, like flip lights and a sunroof. Other things have sort of worn out of being functional, like the gas cap that doesn't close, doors that don't fully lock, seatbelts that don't click in to buckle and air conditioning that blows warm air. It's tough to drive in such heat with the windows rolled down and hot air blowing in your face, but the sun roof helps. On days like today, the sunroof especially helps when the car begins to overheat in traffic and I have to blast the heat in my own face, when it's already 90 or so outside, to keep hot air off of the engine. The joys of having an older car.
I don't always have road rage, but today I thought I was going to have to rip a fat grizzly old man out of his oil tanker and beat him to death with the broken umbrella in my backseat because he was driving across two lanes of traffic at 18 miles per hour. I'm a typical New England driver - pretty aggressive, about 5-8 miles over the speed limit at all times, and heavy-handed with the horn. If I had a working cassette or CD player in the car, I'd constantly be blasting that Ludacris song "Move Bitch" out of my one functioning speaker. However, I always use my turn signal, even in parking lots, keep 3 feet from cyclists on the road and stop for pedestrians in crosswalks.
Most of the road rage I express is when I drive in the passenger seat of my husband's car because he drives like a blind grandma. He's Southern, he can't help it. He drives like a blind grandma who thinks he can't change lanes because then the car behind him would be as close as eight feet, and he is slow like he's wearing special diabetic shoes with thick soles that prevent you from feeling how much pressure you aren't putting on the gas. Blind because he's not looking at the speedometer to see that he's only going 45 on the highway and that there are cars behind him and he shouldn't brake in the left lane. In tense moments, I've had to lean over and honk his horn for him. He doesn't honk enough.
He's clearly safer than me and much less likely to rear-end a pregnant lady (like I did once), or side-swipe a work van while making an illegal and impatient pass on the right in what may have been construed as a breakdown lane by some. He's never done any late-night drag racing and that's fine, we all have different experiences. But today, people in front of me driving slowly when I'm experiencing heatstroke in my own car made me scream expletives out the window in front of children. It's unfortunate and atypical for me. I'm bringing my car to the mechanic tonight for the weekend and number one on his list of things to fix is my horn: it needs to be louder.
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