How to Combat Road Rage

I don't usually give in to road rage. I mean, I scream a lot in my car, explaining to oblivious drivers what idiots they are, but I've never gotten myself into a confrontation before. It was close yesterday. Good thing OYT and his sweet, quirky personality was along.

To begin with, I wasn't happy about the errand, and it was getting close to rush hour (yes, our small town has one, on this particular street we were traveling.) Traffic is   S L O W. I have no idea why it's all plugged up, but as I get cut off by someone who thinks it's really important to be one more car further along, OYT says,

“How about a fun factoid to distract you?”

“Um, OK Sheldon, go ahead.”

“Did you know that womens' tear ducts are shaped differently than mens', so that their tears will roll prettily down their cheeks while a man's tear will roll discreetly down the side of their nose?”

“Why no, I didn't know that. That's a good one. WHERE did you learn that?”

Unlike most fun facts he shares, I'm not thinking this one was from Mythbusters...

“It's (name of YouTube channel – I can't keep up, the subscribe to so many.)”

“Cool. Got anymore?”

“Yes, but I'll save for the next time some idiot pisses you off.”

That didn't take long. By now we can see that it's down to one lane (in each direction). I move over, but many cars just keep driving. You've seen them, they're exempt from the rules, will drive all the way to the barricade, then barge in front of you, who planned ahead and was already safely in the appropriate lane, and force their way in front of you.

“If you eat polar bear liver you'll die of vitamin A poisoning!”

That was just in time because I've just been waiting for seven yahoos to barge in, and some idiot is letting people turn left in front of him, and they're almost getting hit by the CONTINUOUS stream of special folks who've seen the yahoos and decided to join them. So we now have idiots on all sides.

I start to seethe, and scream, and glare. OYT starts singing “Soft Kitty.” It's from Big Bang Theory. Sheldon' s mom used to sing it to him when he was sick, and he makes his friends sing it to him even though he's an “adult”.

♫Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur. Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr, purr, purrrrrr.♫

I melt. And relax. We continue on in traffic. I've had to take some alternate routes because the traffic signal was out at one of THE major intersections and they decided oh so brilliantly to get their cherry-picker trucks and block off two lanes of each major road, direct traffic around the trucks, and fix the lights DURING RUSH HOUR. I understand the directing traffic, absolutely necessary, but wait until you've gotten all those people out of there first, then bring in your equipment. Instead, you've snarled half of town.

We're almost to our destination when we're stopped by a train. A long train. A little hand sneaks over to my shoulder and a soft voice starts singing again. 

~Tina

P.S SMK (handy nick-name tab above) who reads all my posts, immediately had the answer to the Squirrelmageddon dilemma.

"Of course there are squirrels everywhere.  We had a flood.  They're looking for their families, a new home, they're running all over the place!  Mystery solved.