Confessions from a Vigilante Motorist

It's true, folks. I just might be a douche bag.

I was on my way home from work Friday, taking an unusual route to run an errand. I found myself waiting in a left-turn only lane for several minutes. The protected left green signal is short, traffic heavy, and traffic always backs up there. It's frustrating to sit and watch the signal go through three or four cycles before you get a chance to go.

Anyway, I was within one cycle of getting my turn when suddenly on my right appears a dude in a silver Hyundai (I think) with his left turn signal on and the nose of his car virtually touching my right front bumper corner in an agressive, "I'm going to force my way in here" manner. As I tend towards the "vigilante" classification of road raging motorists, a switch clicked on in my head, and I wasn't about to let this guy get away with charging ahead of a long line of cars so he could cut in front of everyone.

As the light turned green, we both went and though I gave up a few inches by fading left, he eventually gave up and pulled in behind me, gesticulating madly. I saw one out of ten fingers prominently displayed. I pointed to my head in a "think next time" gesture as we all pulled to a stop for the next light cycle.

That was when he decided to get out of his car. I quickly figured I had enough room between me and the car in front to pull out and take some evasive action if I needed to, so I stayed put in the car. As he approached my door, I checked the door locks and focused on his suit jacket to see if there were any odd bulges I should be ready for.

This relatively thick-necked guy with short, curly blonde hair rapped on my window and I lowered it a couple inches. He proceeded to yell at me for not letting him in and I replied in kind telling him he should learn to wait in line like everyone else. He ended the conversation by calling me a "douche bag" and strode off in a huff back to his car. I haven't been called a douche bag since the football players in high school would occasionally blurt out with that one while sitting on top of me in the muddy field while playing outside at lunch time. Ah, good times, good times.

Anyway, I drove off and kept playing the incident over in my mind, and was very glad that there hadn't been any violence involved. Then it happened. I realized that if he had just exited from the local post office parking lot, he would've had no chance to wait in the line of cars, and I should have let him in. Technically, he should have gotten in line a few cars back near the exit, but it's extremely likely that I had, in fact, been a douche bag.

Then another thing occurred to me. I'm 99.9% sure that my car is the only one of its description in at least a 15 mile radius. I've seen only two other Audi S4 wagons in the area, and one is dolphin gray and the other imola yellow. And mine is certainly the only one with three bike rack trays on the top. So, I had just pissed in my own drinking water, so to speak, having wrongly ticked off a guy within 1.5 miles of my workplace. Every day that goes by that I arrive back at my car after work to find the tires not slashed nor a message keyed into my door will be a good one. I'm hoping that the dude was an out-of-town traveler or was too blinded by his rage to notice much about my car. For now, I'm on high alert for silver hyundais and I'm letting every huge truck and slow-driving little old lady get in front of me to try and get some karma back. If I run into the guy, I have an apology ready if he's willing to hear it.

Sorry man, my bad.