ANXIETY HELL

I must take some responsibility for deciding not to get all Tokyo Drift on your ass and instead opting to slow down and maneuver in behind you. Really, it’s my fault I spent the next five minutes of my life lurking in your exhaust fumes as I waited with growing rage for you to move forward just enough so that I could finally make my way around you and into the left turn lane.

In your defense, you were flashing some flagrant warning signs that should have alerted me to my mistake, but in my defense, I couldn’t see them until it was too late. Why does the clutserfuck-o-clues that a senior citizen home escapee is behind the wheel always have to be displayed in the backseat? My fate is sealed by the time I lay eyes on the catalog of crap nesting in the rear window.

It’s like a whole SkyMall, AARP Edition exploded in my face. What is that, an electric ear hair trimmer smashed between your World’s Best Grandma mug and a heart-shaped needlepoint craft that may as well say, “My other car is a gurney”? Damn it to hell, I do not need to think about that when I’m screaming obscenities at you!

You had it all: the box of Kleenex in case you sneeze whilst driving and suddenly acquire the Go-Go-Gadget arm superpower to reach all the way into the trunk area for an emergency snot rag, the backseat parade of Beanie Babies and other children’s toys that make me wonder if I’ve seen your license plate on an Amber Alert, and the standard lack of upper cranium where a cranium should ALWAYS appear above the driver’s side headrest of all MOVING vehicles.

I want to apologize for repeatedly slamming my forehead into my horn until you pulled over at an ever-accelerating rate, topping out at a shocking seven m.p.h. I didn’t mean to scare you, but for the love of God, there is nothing more frustrating than The Red Light Slow Roll, especially when it starts during a yellow light. Just get up there already! You do not need to leave forty-seven car lengths between your front bumper and the crosswalk. Why must you torture me?

Stop-and-go traffic is bad enough when it involves actual traffic – it is uncalled for when we are only two of eleven cars on the highway. And, really, five of them didn’t even count because they were piled on a dealership truck trailer. That counts as one vehicle! There should never be traffic in a six car situation. Never! I don’t care if Jenna Jameson is getting a mustache ride from a transgender midget on the side of the freeway. You take a gander and you move it along. You don’t creep down the road at negative speeds.

Are you some kind of auto erotic sadist or are you just suffering from the world’s worst depth-perception problem EVER? I do not understand what your deal is.

Did you once fail to break in time and annihilate a crossing guard and half the student body of an elementary school? Did your antenna spear some poor fifth grader, the Jack in the Box head bobbing out the other side of his gored neck? If so, I apologize for screaming at you. I could see how that would be pretty upsetting. I’d probably have some residual PTSD myself if I’d witnessed your classic old-person-confusing-the-gas-for-the-brake scenario; good God, it must’ve looked so much worse through your crazy bifocals, especially if they were those giant, black cataract sunglasses. You know that shit has some 3-D action going on. Why else would the elderly walk around feeling up walls in those things?

So I guess, maybe, I shouldn’t've stuck my head out the window and shrieked all the various things I would’ve liked to do to your car if I’d had a canon and an unlimited supply of bowling balls. That was wrong.

Maybe you read that a driver should leave room to flee in case a carjacker Hamburglars up to your window. But I gotta warn ya, Grandma, the combination of your paranoia and my road rage is more dangerous than any thug’s attempt to hijack your sweet ride.

What I’m trying to say is, I know it was wrong of me to let out howls of maniacal laughter as I imagined what I’d do to you if I had access to a monster truck, specifically the Gravedigger, as featured on the recent episode of The Tonight Show with Conan O’ Brian where the driver obliterated the world’s largest pumpkin.

Thinking about revving that super-powered engine untill your Rascal shook loose from your trunk apparatus made me giddy, but not nearly as giddy as imagining slamming the beast into reverse then charging forward, launching over your felled motorized cart, and landing on top of the roof of your car.

I feel guilty for thinking these thoughts and I need you to know I would never injure your person – only your car. But I guess you have no idea any of this happened anyway…because you were missing your HEAD!

Perhaps I should’ve addressed this to the owners of the presumably nearby Sleepy Hollow Nursing Home. If you’re reading this, will you please invest in a shuttle service for your residents before I invest in a hood-mounted paintball gun for my car? Fantastic. Thanks so much.