As a child, we traveled a lot. My dad was a traveling timber faller, so we wandered all over the Pacific Northwest and Alaska in his wake. I spent a lot of time in cars (and on boats and planes too!).
That said, one thing I do not remember was as much road rage as I tend to see these days. Granted, I am medium aged now and there are a quite a bit more people in this part of the world than there were when I was a small to medium fry, but I also think there might be more of a prevalence of road rage due to cultural decay reasons.
During our recent foray down to Blackfoot and Pocatello for state, we witnessed one of the most passive aggressive response to road rage and rude behavior that I have witnessed. It was almost inspiring to be honest.
Right out of Idaho Falls, the traffic on I15 bottlenecked a bit due to road construction, the nightly commute, and who knows what else. There were quite a bit of semi trucks in the slow lane, and most of us in small to mid-sized vehicles were in the passing lane, attempting to get through the slowdown.
Well, this creature in a puce shade of green Kia Soul apparently didn't appreciate the situation, and began dangerously weaving in and out of all the traffic trying to get ahead in life. We all let out a collective gasp as he missed the red Nissan sedan's front fender in front of us as he tried to dart out from behind a semi truck and in front of her, his math and depth perception skills failing him in that moment of bad decision.
He then cut in front of us, and the show began.
Right in front of him was what I like to call a local vehicle. There are a lot of older SUV's of small to medium size up this way. GMC Jimmy's, Chevy Blazers, Tahoes, etc...The Old Puce Caboose was so close to the silver Jimmy that they could have been considered married in at least thirty-two states.
We all were amazed at the outright brazen behavior of the driver. He was right on the Jimmy guy's bumper, weaving back and forth like a cocker spaniel with rabies. It wasn't like his display of uncouthery was going to get him anywhere, as there was 80 feet or so of consistent speed semi truck right beside them.
It was here that the passive aggressive part began. The driver of the Jimmy just held his speed right next to the trailer part of the tractor trailer. It became apparent that it was intentional as the miles rolled by.
All three of us were in tears because you could feel both the righteous indignation and absolute rage coming from the two separate vehicles. It was quite a thing to behold.
Finally, after making his point, the Jimmy got over in front of the semi and held out the finger of friendship to the driver of the acid puke green Soul. I'm not sure if the symbolic gesture of love and kinship was returned or not because I was still laughing, but in all honesty, I truly don't get people sometimes. The lack of self-awareness affects us all in the realm of driving at times, but boy does it ever provide some scenes of amusement at other times.
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's never full of incandescent rage iPhone