Les Bonnes Choses

The holidays have ended for most by now. Mine were sort of extended when my family came back with me for the new year. I returned just this afternoon from driving them back home and received a final gift of the season: a brush with road rage. I was coming off the I-55 junction, where it meets up with Lake Shore Drive, right at Chicago's Field Stadium. I try to maintain a constant distance between myself and the car in front of me, which I believe to be prudent, as the abrupt reduction of this distance to zero is a leading cause of accidents. The car in front of me braked. I braked in response. I assume the car behind me braked, but the driver was not very pleased with this chain of events, as, in addition to braking, she honked her horn at me. A moment later, she passed me on the left. Now, cars were braking because traffic along this stretch is controlled by several stop lights, many of which are wont to turn red. Thus, no sooner than she passed me than all lanes came to a stop. The light was red. And so it was that I came to a stop along side this woman's car as she presumably captured a look of bewilderment on my face to see her awkwardly pointing her DLSR camera over the rear passenger window at me. And when I was right alongside her, she continued to snap photos of me. I rolled down my window to explain to her that one cannot go faster than the car in front, but she would hear none of it (for her window remained rolled up). Thus, I didn't even get the satisfaction of explaining myself, not that not plowing into the car in front of me should demand an explanation.

At first I was quite bothered by this. To some degree, I still am, though the edge was dulled somewhat when I was mulling over the title of this blog entry. My first thought was to entitle it Cr*** Bit**, but it was then it occurred to me that the woman might actually have a DSM-qualified problem. I mean, she had a camera at the ready within seconds of passing me. Is this habitual? Whether it is, or she found it while fumbling through her camera bag while driving on a freeway, neither possibility seems the mark of someone particularly rational, nor particularly good at driving. Maybe she was irritated with me because she nearly plowed into my back end while taking a photograph of the previous driver who irked her.

So now that I have written about it, I am mostly over the ordeal. I wholeheartedly encourage you to google "a**hole Canadian driver" or something like that. Who knows? Maybe this woman intends to shame me by posting my perplexed picture on the internet or something. If you do come across my picture, do let me know so I can use it as my facebook profile picture. My only regret is having neither the resources nor the quick wit to have hastily scrawled "Will you marry me?" on a whiteboard. It would give me some satisfaction to think I might cause her to stroke out when she reviewed the photos on her flash card, thereby getting one crazy driver off the road.