I am so tough I stop my car in the road to FISTFIGHT GRRR TOUGH!

The BBQ Pit
1

One thing I will never understand about a large sect of the human population is the concept of machismo, the need to be tougher or stronger or generally more powerful than other people. I can understand how it might have been relevant in the past, hundreds of years ago. For a caveman to live a long life, he might have had to break other cavemen’s skulls with a dinosaur bone. You can’t drag a cavegirl back to your rock dwelling for rough caveman sex unless you have some muscles and a sense of “I’m a tough bastard”

But society has changed a lot since then, and while people in general have advanced their social skills, there is still some segment of the population that retains that base need to phsyically intimidate.

Today, on the way to the house of pancakes which are internationally known, I was driving through a school zone. I didn’t realize it was Saturday, so I was driving just a bit above the school zone speed limit, 20 mph in the regularly 25 zone. A car behind me in the one and only lane didn’t approve and chose to tail me closely. I sped up a bit, 30 mph and when the number of lanes became 2, I chose the slower and kept going 5 miles above the speed limit.

Now, one would think that he would pass me. That is, of course, what the left lane exists for. But instead he tailed closer, and I did what I do in that situation. I slowed to a crawl. “HEY FUCKHEAD, YOU CAN PASS, DO IT NOW” I seemed to say. Erica said it more clearly with a middle finger salute. Probably not the wisest of choices but it sends the same message.

And here comes the machismo. Some people just aren’t happy unless they can swing their dick around a bit. He pulls up alongside and his girlfriend yells out the passenger window. I say calmly “go ahead, you can pass. ok. bye” and do the “run along” wave (which I am very fond of for a wide variety of situations). Apparently the hurry they were in before, pressing me to speed faster faster pussycat, has vanished. And now they have time for a fistfight in the road. They cut me off. Swerve in front of my car and hit the brakes. Get out with a menacing look.

Suddenly it’s not about getting me out of their way. It’s not about me driving too slow, or them being flipped off and needed to return the insults. Those issues are resolved. Now, they just need to demonstrate that they are the strongest of the cavepeople. They want a shouting match or a physical confrontation in the middle of the road. They want to be tough. Maybe they just want to drag Erica back to their cave and have their caveman way with her. I turn around and take an alternate route to the previously mentioned pancake house.

So there they are, standing in the street, feeling so proud. “Oh man, we’re so tough, we showed them!” Australopithecus. Homo Neanderthalis. But confident in it. No realization that I (and most humans) are beyond the point of throwing rocks. We have fire. The wheel. They have clubs. They likely don’t even have reflexes to go along with their brute exterior. That simple in their existence.

Some might consider it weak, the idea of “backing down” from a fight. I consider it evolved.

2

Well, did you go pee on his shoes or what?

3

I had an asshole stop his car and get out to fight me, on the goddamned freeway. Wrote a thread about it, too.

Is it wrong for me to hope these people end up with a starring role in Blood on the Highway?

4

When they stopped and got out I just turned around and went a different route to IHOP. I am simply too good to argue with strangers in the street. It’s all kinds of pathetic and trashy, I’m embarrased for them.

5

Wow, Miller, way to make me glad I had an easy escape. As much as I’d like to pretend I could have just dealt with the face to face and chose not to, in all honesty I probably would have been scared half to death. Stupid physically intimidating people aren’t something I’m real comfortable with.

6

I think giving the close driving rear driver the finger was a preemptory asshole move on the part of your driving companion, and precipitated this chain of events, but rather than calling her an idiot, you note merely that she was “unwise”.

If she keeps being “unwise” your future confrontational vignettes might not all have happy endings.

7

I had a man do that to me here in my apartment complex. I was tailing him a bit because he was driving like granny-fucking-grunt, so he stopped to tell me that if I hit his car he was gonna, “fuck me up.” Or somesuch. He actually got out of his stupid car to say that to me. I about ran him over. I’m just really not the type of person you want to fuck with like that, and I don’t care if you are a man.

I just rolled my eyes and told him to move his ass, which he did. I’m still not sure what he thought he proved with that.

Which brings me to how I need to get mace and a taser gun in case some lunatic does that again, then I can say with all confidence, “bring it on, motherfucker.”

Oh, I think I could possibly be a streetfighting lunatic if someone threatened me.

8

Also, just to clarify, I wasn’t anywhere near his bumper. He just didn’t like the message I was giving that he needed to move it on. We’ve got nine speedbumps between my apt. and the entrance, and it shouldn’t take 10 min. to get out.

9

astro, yeah it was assholish and definitely not something I approve of, but there’s a big difference between the “fuck off, man” finger and the “hey let’s fight” cut-off-and-get-out-of-the-car move.

10

The slowing to a crawl move seems like you were looking for trouble yourself. Admit it, if you really just wanted him to pass, you would have pulled over to the right but you wanted him to have to go even slower, didn’t you?

11

Reread the end of paragraph three of the OP. He was already to the right. Driving on the sidewalk is generally discouraged.

I’ve given up being an asshole on the roads. There are too many other assholes that are better armed than I am.

12

Yeah, I was already in the right lane when he was tailing me.

I wish I would have thought of it at the time, but I should have called the police as I gotten out of the car to do the confrontation thing, and loudly said “yes officer, their licence plate number is FYB 841. You’ll be here in 2 minutes? Ok great”

These are the kind of people with warrants outstanding.

Although, they’re probably also the kind of people who would punch me and speed away even knowing I had their plate number.

13

…and don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to play the nice super-passive guy here. I could have easily just kept my speed and not slowed down and not said “what the fuck, asshole” (which is probably what prompted my carmate to physically express that emotion), and they probably would have just passed me.

Conflict on the road isn’t a problem, to a point. Some yelling and flipping off and minor passive agressive vehicle moves aren’t a big deal to me, my beef is with people who try to change the game from “a couple people in cars who are sort of pissed at eachother” to “face to face physical confrontation that ends in jail time.”

14

~evil grins~
(bolding and italics mine)

Timeline
[ul]
[li]1532: Europe overrun by caveman invasion. [/li][li]1640: First caveman dynasty created. Reaches from spain to eastern europe. [/li][li]1623: First Dinosaur War. Caveman empire drasticly reduced in size and power as a result. Dinosaurs driven back inside the Hollow Earth. [/li][li]1666: Second Dinosaur War. Dinosaurs eat women, children. Plunder. Pillage. Shortage of beer results. [/li][li]1715: With artifacts taken from the second Dinosaur War (big ol’ bones), Ugg the Witless smote Oog the drooling and assumed leadership of the Imperium Cavemania. [/li][li]1798: Thanks to the Illuminati and SubGenius Time Control [sub]tm[/sub]: Cavemen, Dinosaurs, and previously unmentioned Nazi Hell Creatures are all sealed back in the Hollow earth.[/li][li]1799: Civilization re-estabilished[/li][li]1800: Beer supply back to pre-caveman levels. [/li][li]1801: Invention of Code of Law, invention of Bar Brawl. [/li][li]1807: Peace on earth, forever. The End. [/li][/ul]

15

[far side] “Nyah Nyah Neanderthals! Can’t make fire! Can’t use tools!!” [/far side]

16

Hahaha, I figured someone would mention that

17

Pissing off motorists is “unwise” here in L.A. You never know what will happen. It’s called Road Rage. You may be in the right, but that means nothing to a bullet. Better to eat some pride than to eat some lead. I’m completely serious about this.

18

I had a friend get punched in the face for laughing. He was laughing with his buddies about something stupid and the guys in the truck next to them decided he was laughing at them.

The driver got out, punched him in the face (spraying the driver with his blood) and drove off.

Sigh.

19

Yep - there’s a large segment of the population who believes that physical violence is the natural and inevitable result of any kind of verbal altercation. “If you’re gonna say that, you better be ready to fight” or “He called me such-and-such, so I punched him.” I never quite understood what one has to do with the other, but it seems that many people take it as gospel. They believe in that as much as they believe that gravity makes things fall.

20

How true. People are batshit insane in L.A. You look at 'em sideways and they act like you just murdered their mother. I have to constantly remind myself, “Keep your finger inside the car…Keep your finger inside the car…”.