Dropped a cast member off. Headed home. Looked for a place to park. Got to an intersection, stopped. Someone else pulled up, i got there first, so I went through. The other car, some silver beater sports car that hasn't been stylish in quite a while with a big dent in the front right side, gunned it. Then he stopped as I went past him, and honked his horn. He turned to follow me. I went around the block and he kept honking his horn. I was a half block away from my place and I'm being followed. All I'm thinking about is I hope he doesn't start shooting. I can't imagine what his beef was. I stopped. He did that thing where he stopped at the end of the curb and not the stop sign before the crosswalk, like a lot of people do. I stop at the stop sign. Anyway, I stop at the stop sign nearest and now he's at my bumper. I go through the stop sign and he goes through with me, I guess me stopping meant he could go through with me, like a funeral procession. Like MY funeral because he's going to KILL me.
He starts to swerve and try to get ahead of me and now I'm thinking he's going to block me. I pull over into the entrance in an alley and he pulls up beside me. He's SCREAMING. Oh s***, what did I do? I am watching anything below his shoulders to see if he's reaching for something, but he's just yelling. So I roll down the window, if he wanted to shoot me I guess he'd have done it by now.
Ready? This is it. Here's my last few minutes alive.
"you f***ing ***hole! You went through the stop sign!" (this just sums up a giant tirade before I can chime in)
"What? No I didn't!"
"You did! You almost caused an accident!"
"No I didn't! I stopped!"
"No you didn't!"
"I did! I went through because I had the right of way!"
"You almost killed me! My brother died today!"
(Oh, that's terrible news...wait, wha?) "I'm sorry about that. But I didn't blow through the stop sign."
"Don't make me get out of my car!"
"What? No! Seriously, calm down. CALM DOWN. There's no need to fight. There's no need to yell and argue right now."
"You were driving dangerously!"
"Look, dude, I'm not the one with the huge dent in my car."
"Oh, you gotta bring THAT up? My father died today!"
(I swear I heard 'brother' the first time around.) "I'm sorry to hear that."
"You didn't stop at that stop sign!"
(at this point I realize I shouldn't bring up that he blew through TWO stop signs to follow me, as I don't want to hear about his mother dying that morning either.) "I DID stop at that stop sign, I had the right of way. You're the one following me and screaming at me and trying to start a fight."
"Don't make me get out of this car!"
"Then don't!"
"Don't make me into the bad guy!"
"Then don't be the bad guy! You're the one FOLLOWING me! There's no reason for this!" He's giving me the evil stare. "There's no reason to start a fight. Just go!"
"Don't make me the bad guy!"
"Calm down! I'm not making you do ANYTHING. I'm trying to go home."
"Well then go."
"YOU'RE BLOCKING ME."
He starts yelling some more, but he has turned away from me. "Drive SAFELY, okay?"
"I AM." I should mention that I would like to speed off BECAUSE HE'S FOLLOWING ME but I figure I only have another 10 seconds to live before he pulls out a gun. That's all I'm thinking.
"Drive safely!"
"I am. Please go. Just go."
"Say 'goodnight.'"
"What?"
"SAY. 'GOODNIGHT.'"
The stare gets angrier. I say "Fine, goodnight," and lose all respect for myself as he pulls away, driving on the wrong side of the road before turning left.
Oh good, he didn't shoot me. I didn't stick around. I drove around Winnemac Park for a parking spot and didn't find one. I think about how I caved in on saying 'Goodnight.' He followed me and then bullied me into saying "goodnight" to him. Why was this important? What just happened?
I just had a moment of weakness because I thought it'd be safer. I am a filthy coward who didn't want to get into a fight with a stranger in a s***ty car that proves he's the bad driver because he obviously didn't drive defensively at some point. I make the judgement, and I judge myself poorly in that moment at the end, because I am terrified of hot-headed alpha male assholes who will think nothing in the heat of the moment in pulling out a gun and killing me because he didn't see me stop at the stop sign, because nearly everyone today stops at or past the curb and then keeps on driving.
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Added later in response to some nice people who were glad I didn't get into a fight:
The point is, HE STILL GOT SOMETHING.
Even if he didn't get to get out of his car and be 'the bad guy,' HE STILL GOT ME TO SAY SOMETHING I DIDN'T WANT TO SAY. You f*** with me, you deserve ZERO. NOTHING. You don't even deserve to exist. You are the square root of -1 and have less options in my mind than Shroedinger's stupid cat. That's the truth.
It's the first line in Genesis, "Don't f*** with Paul Czarnowski." I'm pretty sure that's the case, I don't own a bible but I'll wikipedia it later.
It's what kept me up. That ONE little thing. The end.
I can only imagine that's he's bullied some poor girl(s) into terrible dates and they allowed him to kiss him in the cheek as he's dropping them off (because they insisted on going home early, making up having to go in to the office, on a Sunday morning), and he drove off thinking he just scored. ("C'mon, baby, put out. My MOM just died today.") Point is, he was always in the wrong, and incorrectly drove off thinking he did something good for himself at my expense. Oh boy, I'm the bigger man, because he gets to get away with thinking he's hot shit.
PLEASE NOTE: this is just me venting my frustration about meatheads. I tend to type silly, somewhat exaggerated things when I get like this. I know that the first line of Genesis is slightly different than what I wrote, and we all know I have no plans to look up anything on the wikipedia. And the square root of -1 is 'i' and it's actually an important substitute digit in math needed to solve complex equations.
Believe me, the last thing I wanted was to get in a fight, get some damage to my car that I can't afford because he probably doesn't have insurance and I doubt I'd freely get his info without the police involved (and were nowhere to be seen, of course), or, uh, DIE, because he just starts shooting at me because I was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Don't you just like how I just ASSUMED that he bullies women into dates? It's like I wrote his back story. That's how I'm the bad guy, just coming up with the worst possible scenario for every person who tries to ruin my day.
Enjoy your miserable life in your once-impressive sports car as you have to let off steam by harassing other people who have their crap together!
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