This Thing Keeps Happening

People keep inciting aggression against me when they’re the ones who have done something objectively wrong.

It’s probably a larger statement on humanity: people are entitled dickbags. They took my advice to stop giving a shit about one another long before I gave it, apparently. They really believe they’re infallible, and if you so much as pull a face they will COME AT YOU. People don’t even appear to think they’re not in the wrong, they’ll fully admit that shit, then double down. It’s clinical narcissism in action.

The most recent time this happened, I was walking in my neighborhood in the evening with Husband. We live near a river and there’s a sidewalk that runs between the water and the road. The opposing side of the street is lined with houses, there are two very small public parks, and the speed limit is 25 as is the norm in residential areas. The road is frequently used as a cut through to avoid a pretty long stoplight on a highway and therein lies the issue: People drive down this road like it’s also the highway.

Someone drove by us the other evening in a yellow sports car. It appeared to be going too fast. Frequently when people are going too fast, I wave my arms and shout at them because that’s the person I’ve become, but because this usually incites them to drive faster and on this particular day I’d already done a lot of working out, I simply made this face:

That’s all I did. I made that face. As a car drove past me on a public road. And I didn’t even really look at it.

We glanced over our shoulders to watch it continue on, expecting it to turn up one of the other roads to avoid the light, but were very surprised when it, in fact, did not do this, but instead BACKS THE FUCK UP.

It was driving significantly slower this time, in reverse, so my husband stops, uncomfortable with the situation, but I continued on and ended up a couple yards ahead of him.

“Excuse me, ma’am!”

She had passed my husband and rolls up next to me, her passenger window down. I lean over to peer into her speedster to see a woman, maybe mid fifties, with that “I need to speak with a manager,” choppy-bleached haircut, and a serious case of stank face. She proceeds:

“I just want you to know I’ve lived in this neighborhood for 30 years, and I know the speed limit is 25.”

I just kind of stared at her, maybe squinted a little, thinking really hard. What did any of that mean? Her notation of the speed suggested that she knew I was annoyed with how fast she was going, so obviously it was too fast, but her words suggested she thought she wasn’t speeding and was in the right. Additionally, the amount of time she had lived in the neighborhood was ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT. But that’s a big part of people’s problems. They think they’re entitled to shit, especially if they’ve been around. So she’s lived on this block for as long as I’ve been alive. Shockingly there’s still local fauna left. She goes on:

“And I was just going 29.”

Ya know what? Maybe she was. I really don’t think that’s true, but let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. She was going 29 in a 25. So she just admitted she was going over the speed limit.

I’m looking at her like WTF and before she can go on, Husband steps up and says, “That doesn’t matter to the animals out here.” O shit, he done did it.

She briefly looks at him before setting her icy glare back on me and says, “Oh I know, I have three boxers.”

AGAIN THIS IS IRRELEVANT INFORMATION.

“So you know?” I say to her, emboldened by Husband, “You know people walk out here with their pets and there are wild animals running around, and so you know you should be driving more slowly, but you’re not?”

“I just want you to know,” she tells me in a way that bitchy cannot even begin to describe, “I was only going 29.”

I’m fucking flabbergasted, I don’t know what to say. Is she fucking with me? She doesn’t seem smart enough to fuck with me this way. This just seemed like insanity. You’re admitting to me you’re going over the speed limit, I didn’t even say anything to you, and you decided you had to drive back to me, ME SPECIFICALLY, and tell me off for MAKING A FACE THAT YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WAS TO YOU.

I was so thrown off I could barely spit out some swears at her as she careened away, tires squealing and all.

So what made her so bold as to do this? And why didn’t she just lie and say she was going the actual speed limit? How is it the state of things that this is the kind of conclusion people come to?

Yes I was being shitty but how dare you judge me.

This was not, of course, the first time this happened to me and Husband. Some brodude almost hit us when we were driving in a Publix parking lot a few years ago. He was cutting between the spaces, we were going down the aisle. The guy drove around and parked. Once we also parked and started toward the store, the driver emerged from a row of cars to verbally attack us for…almost getting hit, I guess? He literally yelled, “Why are you so mad? Did you die?” Like, I thought it was a joke, but this dude was for real. His friend was even put off by it, trying to calm him down. We said nothing since he was gigantic, and I thought at the time it was a possible Roid Rage moment, but since similar things keep happening, mostly to do with cars, and it’s just mind boggling. Perhaps being behind the wheel of what they could very easily turn into a weapon emboldens people.

Husband honked at someone who cut him off and the guy stopped, blocking Husband’s car, and ran up to Husband’s window. He drove away in a panic, thank god. Two hillbillies almost ran Husband and I over in a Home Depot parking lot. After jumping out of the way, we continued to our car, and a shirtless, three-toothed product of inbreeding followed after us calling me a fatass for getting in the way. A piece of shit 20-something cat called me from his truck and when I mumbled under my breath that he was disgusting as he drove off, he instead slammed on his breaks and drove at my walking pace for a good five minutes berating me while I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. Lovely tinges of misogyny sprinkled in there, but overall humans are just going bonkers.

I guess I could go out of my way to smile at these idiots, kill them with kindness as it were, but I wonder if it would even matter. People seem to just be, I don’t know, rotting from the inside. It’s like we can shine up their shells all we want, but their going bad from the core. Or they’re just broken.

I don’t really yell at speeders on my road anymore because I’m afraid the next person will have a gun, to be honest. So I guess the psychos win, in the end. But that’s par for the course in 2017, hu?

Or maybe the issue is really with me? I’ve probably come off super negative in these last few posts, but I do try to focus on the positive irl, I’m incredibly happy, have so many wonderful things in my life, and I know there’s a lot of good out there, but maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m calling it to me. If only it would stop manifesting like this and I could harness the dark energy.

But I’d probably just go find that lady and give her four flat tires.