Before I begin, let me say I have a squeaky clean driving record. I have all my points incurring interest. My driving past includes only one infraction, a speeding ticket that, depending on your view of the situation, may or may not have been a pathetic excuse to meet a cute police officer. Otherwise, I am a careful, respectful driver who follows the rules of the road. Until you cut me off.
Like most fools, I take that aggressive vehicle manoeuvre personally, especially when it could endanger my life or that of my children. Case in point: my 10-year-old and I were driving from Waterloo one afternoon, when we entered a rural road intersection with a green light. The car before us was waiting to turn northbound, paused for oncoming traffic. This was a one-lane road. I was waiting for the car ahead of me to make his turn. I could see it was not going to be a long wait. Meanwhile, cars stopped in the northbound lane were safely making the turn to go eastward too, knowing I could not move.
Suddenly, the mini-van driver behind me decided he was above the law. In an aggressive, wheel screeching move, the van curved around my car at the very moment the car before me turned and I had begun to drive ahead. A northbound car had just made a proper turn seconds before. There was nowhere for minivan to really go. Now four cars were in motion in one lane. Mini van and I would have collided had I not been paying attention. My child would have been hurt.
Anger is not an emotion I experience often, but this day, all maturity flew out the window. I hit the horn and thrust my middle finger into the centre of the windshield, waving it side to side to be sure mini-van driver saw it. It felt good.
I know, it was irrational and childish, (oh, like you’ve never done it). Life is too short to get a seat belt in a twist over an idiot driver who has a burning desire to get to the next stop sign first. The mini-van sped off in the distance, tailgating the car ahead of it. I wished for an OPP car to be waiting. No such luck. Ah well, I reasoned, my gesture made me feel better, and no harm was done, right? Then the voice of reason reared its little head from the back seat.
“Mom, I saw what you just did,” accused my ten year-old daughter.
Busted. Denial was futile. Instead I presented an air-tight legal brief of traffic misdemeanors, not to mention our near-collision experience. She wasn’t buying it.
“Mom, you showed that person your middle finger. That’s a swear word. I don’t know which one, but I know it’s bad,” she scolded, with a stern look over her glasses.
My bad.
“You are not setting a good example, Mother.” She used that tone, where Mother sounds like a bad word:“ Mutherrr.”
Guilty as charged. There was no excuse.
“I’m going to tell Dad,” she threatened.
Great. Now I was a road-rage person and she was a blackmailer.
There is nothing like humility served to you by your own child to slap you upside the head and into reality. I apologized. She still told her father. They both enjoyed that. Lesson learned.