Wendy Jans

Yesterday I was at a 4-way stop. It was, (so I thought), my turn to go, so I started to go at the same time as the car across from me, who also thought it was his turn to go. It was one of those moments where you play chicken and both drivers are sort of jockeying for their position. But in this case, the driver across from me won by virtue of a full-on adult temper tantrum.
It was such a non-big-deal to me, that I didn’t even realize it was a ’situation’ until I heard his horn blaring and saw his face, red and shaking – consumed with rage screaming his unheard profanity at me. The last thing I saw as I stopped and he made his left turn in front of me, was his middle finger rising up vehemently in front of his furious face.

Now, I like to think of myself as pretty quick on my feet. But in this case, I had absolutely no response except, well, to smirk. Which I’m sure didn’t help. But it was just so overblown that it was almost laughable. I mean, it was a 4-way stop. We were accelerating from a full stop, so we were going what, two miles an hour? This was not a life or death situation.
In truth, I felt sorry for him. I just kept thinking – what’s it got to be like to carry that fear and anger around all the time?

But the thing that really struck me was getting the middle finger. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually gotten flipped the bird before (to my face, at least). It struck me how vulgar it really is. His middle finger waving in the air as I read his lips screaming “F*** YOU!” — I just kept thinking, ‘wow, really?’ Like, is that really what you, as a grown adult man would to say to a petite woman sitting in a little Ford Focus going 2 miles an hour? Do you know what you’re saying? You’re taking a physical act intended for the expression of love and making it a violent act of retribution and revenge.
Do you know what they call that?

I once heard that you never know who someone really is until you have a fight with them. This is not good news for me, being that I have been a real jerk in my time. But it’s an interesting notion to think about how the things that come out of our mouths in the heat of a moment are actually windows to the ugliness inside us. We can never hurt someone as much as we hurt our own character with the words that we choose.