Today I witnessed an incident of Publix parking lot rage. It's not the first time I've seen such a thing and I've always wondered who's the winner in these situations. Fortunately it wasn't serious and nobody was injured, also no cars were damaged but there certainly was a victim and an antagonist.
I was pushing my shopping cart full of broken "healthy options only" promises. A couple of pies that were on offer, plenty of ice cream and a few frozen pizzas with 3 packs of soda. I should also mention that I had this weeks company retirement lottery tickets in my pocket. I heard the noise of a fast car in the lane over from where I was dawdling along trying to divide the jackpot $182,929,992.23. I was attempting the mathematical quandary without a calculator in order to estimate the of money the six members of our "I'm out of here" lottery pool would share, by the time I turned around a car horn was being leaned on.
Not the friendly toot to say "watch out I'm behind you" but more the "get the fuck of out my way, don't you know who I am" kind of 6 second blast.
The problem was that a middle aged lady in a black SUV was trying to drive down the lane while two drivers had the audacity to try and reverse out of their parking spot into the lane in order to leave the premises. To say that this crotchety SUV driver had issues is a bit of an understatement, it was around 14:00 in the afternoon and plenty of shoppers were walking around, it was a dangerous situation even if you were lucky enough to be protected by a cage of German steel.
I felt sorry for the drivers trying to reverse out of their slot, if you're in a late model car with no camera technology it's not easy to survey the area behind your car before you start to pull out. Fortunately these days you can see the reverse lights and also see the movement of a car slowly creeping out of the bay. Absolutely nobody and I suspect even CIA satellites can't see a car driving at speed down the lane towards your reversing car.
I don't know where the SUV driver was going or if she was a brain surgeon responding to an emergency call but the environment of a busy grocery store parking lot certainly isn't the place to red line a car. Even if you've just robbed the bank inside the store it would be more prudent to drive carefully out of the parking lot before hitting the floor with the gas pedal and trying to make a clean get away.
So the horn goes off and everything around me stopped dead in it's tracks just like someone had pressed pause on the video tape of my life. People heads turned but all movement of shopping carts came to a screeching halt but the SUV didn't slow, there was no burning of any break lights, she continued to drive at speed towards the now stationary cars that were half in the parking space and half in the lane.
The lady was breaking the sacred rule of never driving at speed into danger, given this weeks news about pedestrians being mowed down by a driver in Las Vegas I feared the worst. I can only guess that her strategy was if anything bad happens it's not my fault because it was you that was in my way!
The lane now had a mobile chicane caused by the two stationary drivers in front of her, she flipped the wheel to the left and then to the right somehow managing to keep one hand on the horn, her phone lodged between her ear and shoulder with the other hand on holding her Starbucks and the steering wheel. Let's not forget that this is a skill that all Atlanta drivers must develop so this sight alone was not unusual.
I watched in amazement as she rolled through two stop signs and then sped away on the open road. I wasn't angry, more curious about what the lady thought she'd achieved by laying on the horn and leaving the parking lot less than 60 earlier than if she'd been polite and patient enough to let the other drivers complete their maneuvers, effectively sharing the road with other people. Could she possibly be feeling elated at "teaching" those reversing drivers a lesson or had she "socked it" to the common man. I hope somewhere there's a consequence, a day of reckoning or does her anger go much further than when she's behind a wheel, it's hard for me to imagine what events in her life have made her become this abuser of the horn.
However I must admit that if I'd been driving one of the reversing cars I'd have been incensed, but from the look of incomprehension on the face of the two other drivers they had absolutely no idea what had just gone down. Eventually they gained the courage to continue their reversing maneuver and drive out of the parking lot.
For various reasons I've been driving around Atlanta without the ability to produce a drivers license, I had one but lot my wallet and due to the fact that I also lost my green card it wasn't possible to replace my drivers license due to government red tape. Since I was in the middle of a 6 month process of renewing my green card I decided to risk continuing to drive and hope that I wasn't pulled over.
So for almost 6 months I've been the most cautious driver on the planet, I've been stopping completely at stop signs, I've been breaking the moment a traffic light turned amber (yellow), I've used 462 turn lamp bulbs as I've signaled every intended change of lane or direction. Somehow I've managed to keep around the speed limit only allowing myself to go 4 MPH faster than the legal limit if I felt that the police cruisers were busy catching crooks. I've been such a good driver that the white haired ladies from church have been giving me the finger for not "driving with the flow".
It's been an interesting experiment, never has driving been so exciting, especially when I've looked in the rear view mirror and seen a police cruiser directly behind me. Even worse when I've turned left and they've followed me. I've ignored the 7 cars can go through amber "golden rule". I've allowed just about every car trying to merge with traffic go before me and I've even acknowledged drivers that have tooted their horn with an open hand to let them know I was sorry.
I've got to say that this persona as being a safe and considerate driver isn't too far away from my normal driving style, now that I'm about to enter the final stage of my life I have found that I'm happy to follow traffic. These days I don't understand why people fight to weave in and out of traffic to save 50 seconds or so or why they gamble with amber and realistically drive through a red light. Is there any time in your life that 50 seconds is worth causing a fatality accident ending your time on earth or worse a complete strangers life.
You're probably thinking that the last few months have been the safest time of my driving career but that's so far from the truth that the opposite is true. I've never been so scared in my life. Countless times I thought my number was up as I heard screeching of tires behind me when I stopped before the light was officially red. I've had multiple drivers dive into the two car length gap I've left between the car I'm following and my own car, causing me to break for my life.
In short I've developed a new theory for the motor insurance company that anyone that has a safe driving record should have to pay increased rates to help compensate for the accidents their careful, patient and lawful driving causes! These guys are a danger to the other drivers on the road!
You don't get to be 123 years old without the pleasure of seeing some kind of natural justice and one of them springs to mind when I was standing in a long line of traffic on a single lane road, there was some road works ahead in the distance and a car overtook me on the wrong side of the road. They were speeding down the road and if another car approached from the opposite direction they'd kind of force some space by nudging the standing car closer to the curbside so that there was room for three cars to be side by side.
I watched the progress of the rouge driver and was shaking my head when suddenly his progress came to an abrupt halt as a six wheeler ahead decided to turn left and was T-boned by the vehicle driving on the wrong side of the road. I laughed and laughed up to the point where I passed the actual accident but fear not because the driver who decided to ignore the law and endanger innocent people wasn't going to drive anything ever again. Natural justice and Darwinism in action but it wasn't a good sight for this sensitive soul to see!
That's my reality,
Jobsonian
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