About a week ago, I was dropping off a camera that Hannah had left in my car. She was at a friend’s house on Spring Garden, near UNCG, where the streets are always overcrowded. I pulled into an open space, where I was half in a parking space, and half blocking a driveway. Hannah bounded out the front door, barefooted, crossed the street, came to my drivers’ side window and I handed her the camera—the whole exchange took maybe 15 secs. As she turned to skip back across the street, an older guy came out of the house in front of which I was parked. He was my age, a little younger, longish gray hair, maybe an ex-Deadhead—and he was yelling at Hannah, not to block his driveway, and to come back here and move her car. Obviously he hadn’t seen me in the car, and just assumed she had parked poorly and popped out of her car, leaving his driveway partially blocked. She ignored him (I’ve seen this face before), and went back inside. He was in the street by the time he saw me, and started making rude gestures. All this happened in less than a minute. I didn’t care for an older guy yelling at my teen daughter, and halfway chasing her across the street, so I rolled up with him on my passenger side window, and said, “Don’t be a [jerk]; she’s only 15.” To my surprise he started yelling, cussing me out, and leaning way in the passenger window, “Come on outside, you blankity blank-blank. Get out of that car and let’s fight.” Then he traced my lineage, and made anatomically impossible suggestions. I was surprised, especially since so much of him was in my car. My inner-balcony voice said, You must keep your foot on the brake so that the car won’t jerk forward and hurt this ass; while my darker, cellar voice was whispering, Step on the gas! Snap this bonehead in half, and let him go see Jesus—that your job, isn’t it? He kept yelling at me, challenging me to get out of the car and fight him, all the while with half of him in my car window. I finally said, in the face of all his threats, “Dude, I know where you live.” I have no idea what this was intended to convey, maybe distain at the color of his house or his poor lawn care. It just seemed stupid to me to threaten someone in front of your own home. Eventually I drove off, picturing my mug-shot in the paper for killing a guy with my car. My point being, that many of us can devolve into murderous thoughts and feelings quickly, and that impulse to hurt someone is not just in others, but in each of us, where it bubbles up speedily.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 01:37:44 +0000
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