The Good Girl's Guide To Road Rage

I am twenty five years old, and I have never once slammed a door in anger. I've also never raised my voice unless I'm calling someone from the other room. I'm just not wired that way; I don't always want to be peaceful, but I am.

Awhile back, I had this boss-from-you-know-where, and after three years of trying to push my buttons and failing, I thought she was finally beginning to accept me when she called me into her office and asked me to shut the door.
"Hello," she said.
"Hi," I said.
Our conversations were unbearably awkward.
There was a big pause. She seemed to be looking out into the hallway, although I didn't know what she was trying to see: at that time of the morning, the offices were always abandoned and employees were in little groups tending to morning duties elsewhere.
"I have mail for you," she said.
I signed for it.
"Thanks," I said, and then I left.

When I'd been back in my office twenty minutes, my boss (whom I'll call Cherub for this retelling) came into my office, looking grave. "We need to go into a meeting right now," she said.
"Okaaaaay...." I said, terrified. I had no idea what was coming, and Lord knows I am not a racist, but let me tell you, I could tell from looking into her eyes that this woman's Latin blood was coming out.
"NOW," she said.
Her boss' boss was sitting there staring at us, when we walked in the door. He looked sad and bored, and he gnawed on his lower lip.
"Cherub told me what happened," he said.
I was lost. "Excuse me, sir?"
I looked at Cherub, and in an instant, I knew what was happening. She was slumped over in a chair, head in her hands, and SHE WAS ACTUALLY CRYING, big pathetic drops of deceit.
I'd been too optimistic: when I assumed that she had grown tired of trying to push my buttons and had finally decided to accept the pacificst Jesus and my parents had unexpectedly produced, she'd decided to start making up stories about me.
"Jane came in my office, shut the door, and started screaming at me," she said, shoulders heaving with silent emotion while I watched on in mortified silence. "She was just....just....screaming at me."

It wasn't the first lie she'd told about me, and nor would it be the last, but that accusation hurt more than them all, because I had often wished that I could stand up to this woman, or start yelling at her, OR EVEN TURN AROUND AND WALK OUT OF HER OFFICE while she was on one of her rampages. And because here I was, required to take the punishment for screaming at a superior, when I had never even had the satisfaction of getting angry with her.

It was the worst.

That darling woman is no longer my boss, and while I currently work for the same organization in the happiest job of my life, she has continued to terrorize future victims while I have been exonerated from all of the bogus charges, so I sometimes look back on those days without really remembering how awful it was to be treated like I was.
But sometime between then, when everything was real and terrifying, and now, when everything is fuzzy and hazy and gorgeous, THE INCIDENT happened.

I am not an aggressive driver. I let everybody else at the stop sign go ahead of me. I let people cut me off, AND I ACTUALLY MAKE UP EXCITING STORIES TO GO WITH THEIR BAD DRIVING, such as, "Oh, that poor guy; he's probably on his way home to a sick child." Or, "That woman looks really sad: she was probably just dumped by her boyfriend. No wonder she's driving like a crazy maniac."
One day, when I was driving sweetly and minding my own business, a car appeared out of nowhere, cut me off, flipped me off, weaved in between lanes, slammed on his brakes, sped up haphazardly, and flipped me off again, all in about ten seconds.
I didn't mind that he was being a bad driver, but he had scared me badly. By the time I saw him in my peripheral vision, my heart was already racing, and for some reason I was more frightened than I'd ever been on the roadway before.

I'd like to tell you that I lost it, because that's what it felt like to me. I followed him closely, I got in front of him when I could, I used my brakes liberally, and all of the while my heart raced. In actuality, I'm pretty sure I suck at road rage, because he seemed to feel that my behavior was consistent with normal driving, glanced at me casually without anger, and even looked at me with a sad wave of apology when we ended up at a stop light together.  But what happened in my heart was that I was angry -- terribly, perfectly angry -- for the first time in my life.

Everyone always told me that anger was cathartic, but they were lying. I felt sad and dirty, because getting angry had done nothing for me. It was all very anti-climactic, and I felt like an idiot while he drove on, never imagining that in those thirty seconds I had let a poor random stranger strip me of my anger-virgin status.