Take Some Time For Yourself and Learn to Yield

I work on a winding side street in a pleasant part of town. There are several small businesses along this route, each with neatly trimmed bushes and perfectly kept lawns and smoothly paved parking lots. It's like the suburbs of workplaces. Nothing dramatic ever happens on this street...or at least nothing dramatic ever happened until Friday.

To fully understand my story, you'll probably need to see the visual I've prepared. Please to enjoy:


Okay...it's kinda small, but you should be able to make out a couple different colors. The adorable pink dot represents me, driving along happily in my Hyundai Elantra. The bright yellow dot represents a yield sign, standing firmly (as it has for years) on the corner of Indeco Court. The shit brown dot represents the crazy bitch in the Chevy Malibu, blatantly ignoring the bright yellow dot (which, as we've already established, represents a yield sign).

Naturally, I was not pleased when the shit brown dot pulled out in front of my adorable pink dot. So I did what pretty much any other driver would have done in the same situation. I slammed on my brakes, laid on the horn, threw my hands in the air and mouthed some pretty unpleasant words to the other driver.

Apparently, the other driver didn't enjoy being told she was in the wrong. She rolled down her window to exchange words with me. Something about this whole situation told me she was not about to ask if I had any Grey Poupon, so I drove off and pulled in the parking lot of my workplace.

Crazy Bitch, as she will henceforth be named, performed an illegal u-turn, driving onto one of the perfectly kept lawns of a nearby business in the process, and followed me.

I realized this problem wasn't going to just go away, so I rolled down my window and said five simple words: "You had a yield sign."

To which crazy bitch responded: "You've never made a mistake in traffic in your life?"

To which I responded: "You had a yield sign."

To which she responded: "What's the problem? You saw me. I saw you. There was no reason for you to wave your hands around like a crazy person and..."

At this point, I lost focus on any words that were coming out of Crazy Bitch's mouth, because my gaze was drawn to the backseat of her car, where two small children were beaming at me from car seats. One of them even waved.

This woman endangered the life of her adorable children first by failing to yield, then by driving erratically to chase me down, and finally by confronting a person she knew absolutely nothing about and I was expecting this conversation to come to some sort of logical conclusion?

I smiled and waved at the little girls and simply said "Hi Sweeties. I'm sorry."

I don't know if Crazy Bitch felt she'd said everything she had to say or if she suddenly realized what I'd realized just 2 seconds before, but she stopped yelling at me and drove off.

What did I learn from this experience? Well, for one - no more talking to other drivers in the car, no matter how badly they screw up. Keep comments in your head, or maybe say them as if you're an accomplished ventriloquist, but seriously, no comments or eye contact anymore. Ever. (This is not only a lesson, but a harsh rule that has been laid down by Jay, who after hearing my story simply said, "How many times have I told you not to start shit with people in traffic?")

But also, I learned that there are people out there who have no concern for their own lives or the lives of the people they supposedly love. These people cannot be reasoned with because there is nothing reasonable about them. These are the people I have the most trouble accepting as viable human beings...but ironically, these are also the people I find myself praying for the hardest before I fall asleep at night. Not out of pity, or even sympathy...but out of fear for the well-being of everyone around them.

I actually got lucky yesterday. Lucky that she was only crazy enough to yell and wave her arms instead of steadying a handgun in my face. Lucky that I was wise enough to realize there was no way out of this situation except to yield to person who failed to do so moments before. Lucky to go home to the man I love and get the speech I needed to hear with no yelling or arm waving...just lots of love and sincerity.

I guess we all need to learn to yield sometime.