A dude who was kind of trying to show me how much better his car was than mine, but not succeeding, (you know the kind of driver who tries to cut in front of you or leave you eating his dust at a green light), finally gave up, got halfway out of his car and started screaming at me how ugly my car was and how pathetic it looked and how much nicer his car was.
On the other hand, just today I was stuck in traffic. So, I had to merge into another dinky street. And a girl who saw this made an obvious move to block me. I kind of thought this was a sort of dickish move on her part and looked at her, shaking my head. She just shrugged and looked away. So I thought to myself “What a jerk” and was prepared to let her advance.
When the car in front of her finally moved she didn’t move and actually waved to let me pass! That was a very nice surprise.
Hey, now, married-guy drag racing (accelerating safely but as quickly as possible up to the speed limit from a green light) isn’t douchey in and of itself.
For some reason your tale brought to mind a positive experience I had in traffic. I was rounding a corner at the exact moment I sneezed. My car was still moving, but there was exactly enough time to hear the lady standing on the street corner shout, ‘‘Bless you!’’ and for me to thank her.
There are people generating good karma out there. Somewhere.
Today. I was in a cab with my wife heading up our street not more than a few blocks from my apartment. The fucking burnout in front of us stopped his pickup in the middle of the street and was having a heart to fucking heart with someone standing on the sidewalk. The street, one way of course, was too narrow for us to go around him. So our cab and everyone else was backed up behind this herb.
Our cabbie, a Dominican guy, was personally offended because apparently “these motherfuckers are from my country! they’re from my fucking country!” so he got out of the cab and started talking with his hands. I thought he was going to pull a tire iron out of his trunk and perhaps do something rash. This strategy didn’t work: the other fools started beating their chests and basically challenging our cabbie to attack them.
I just called 311 and by the time I got through to a human being, the asshole got the message and pulled his truck up and over ten feet so everyone else could pass him.
He had Florida plates. It figures he wasn’t from around here.
You know, the entire internet isn’t about you. I don’t now why you think my comment was specifically targeted at you. What happened to work in one particular case for me is not necessarily applicable to everyone. Really my point was regarding all the negative comments I received for actually responding to the very same sort of assholes people are describing. And FWIW, actually retaliating really didn’t make me any less angry then doing nothing so there really wasn’t much benefit anyway.
I was at a four-way intersection. Stopped and looked around before proceeding. Apparently, the car to my right took offense at me looking in her general direction and so chased me down several blocks honking and giving me the finger. I wasn’t sure whether to find it funny or sad that I could piss people off by just being alive, like I don’t even have to try.
I was sitting in a left turn lane at an intersection behind an asshole in an open topped jeep type vehicle, who was honking and yelling at the guy in front of him whenever he didn’t turn through what he thought was obviously a big enough hole in traffic. The traffic on this road was pretty heavy, and there was no way you could have made a safe turn throughout all this. So finally there’s a big enough space to turn through, and I see the guy in front take his foot off the brake to take the turn, when the asshole behind him pulls into the oncoming lane so he can cut in front of him. Guy in front has to slam on his brakes, and the asshole in the jeep takes off.
But the story has a happy ending. You see, the car in line behind me was a police car, who also pulled out and took the turn, with extra added flashing lights.
Honestly I hate making left turns because of people like this. In New Jersey there are a lot of them. People don’t take too kindly to folks using their own best judgment about when to turn around these parts.
YMMV, of course, and I do some of that married-guy drag racing myself but I dislike the “cutting” part. And I especially dislike the guys who indulge in this kind of racing against people who clearly aren’t trying to compete against them.
Something similar happened to me this weekend. If someone is in such a hurry to skip ahead and turn into the oncoming cement truck I have no problem with it. That lesson will last for the rest of their (extremely short) lives. (they ended up pulling back into the lane and beeping at me. Because I had cast Summon Heavy Truck or something.)
This example of assholishness is pretty mild compared to most posted here, and it didn’t even involve me directly. But I still think it fits the bill.
If you’ve ever attended a high school or college commencement recently, you’ve probably heard the master/mistress of ceremonies politely request that the audience refrain from applause or any other kind of verbal expression until ALL graduates have been announced and have received their diplomas.
And you’ve just as surely seen this perfectly reasonable request roundly ignored by at least half of the audience…all those charming individuals who think that the rules may apply to others, but they certainly don’t apply to them. Their right to make any and all variety of monkey sounds is unquestioned in their minds.
At my niece’s high school graduation a couple of years ago, it was business as usual, with moronic outbursts every couple of students. But in one instance, the person giving forth with the outburst was just a couple of rows below me.
He rose up out of his seat and bawled “Awright Shelley!” in a loud voice, and then turned around with a look of smug satisfaction that is still burned into my memory to this day…as if he were somehow so entitled to have done this.
There was something about having this assholish behavior shoved into my face at such close range that just got to me. I felt as if I truly had stared directly into the belly of the beast.
JUST had my encounter for today…
A shirtless teenage boy shows up on my porch talking bullshit about how he is getting points for just meeting people, talking to them. My bullshit meter started going off right away. I have a gate on my front porch so my dogs won’t get off the porch and he had left it wide open. I asked his politely to shut it before I came out because the Papillons always walk out with me. He did and then asked if the dogs bite when they came out with me… I asked if they LOOK like they bite-both were wiggling nose to tail, licking his legs.
He proceded to bullshit a little more, asking where I work, etc, and then asked what my hobbies are and handed me 2 ratty, sweat-damp sheets with magazines listed. He TOLD me I was going to order 2 subscriptions from him. I handed them back and said no thank you, there was nothing I want. He pointed out that since I have dogs, I need Ceasar’s Way, the dog whisperer magazine. I again said no thank you, I don’t like his training methods.
He then got beligerant, said OK maybe you don’t want the magazines, but you can help me out to go to nursing school, blah blah blah, I’m just trying to make a living like you do. Um… no, I don’t make a living by bullying people into buying things they don’t want. I honestly thought for a moment he was going to REALLY go off on me, but instead he kicked at my dogs (I would have rathered he take a swwing at me…) and stormed out the gate, leaving it open. I yelled HEY at him and he yelled F*CK YOU back… I really wish I knew what organization he was with because I would report him for sure.
