Picture me, just under 5 feet tall, just over 100 pounds, blonde hair, hazel eyes, screaming profanity at you because you “forgot” to put your blinker on when taking a turn. This is my life, every day. I suffer from road rage and like most people from this area I think, actually I know I am the best driver there is. I am the girl who will ride your bumper in the fast lane because you’re only going 70, but will turn around and go 65 in the fast lane because someone else is riding my bumper. I don’t play fair and I don’t care. I think recently I honked my horn at a pedestrian for walking too slow, who does that?

I’m really not a nasty person in real life. Outside of the car, I try and live my life by “treat others the way you want to be treated”. I actually care about people’s feelings and would never say anything to hurt someone intentionally. But as soon as you put me in the vehicle, passenger or driver, all my manners go out the window. I would be embarrassed by myself if people actually heard the things that I say about them. This has to be common behavior. I know I can’t be the only one who does this.

I actually Googled it out of curiosity to see if there was a name for this or if it was a common behavior. An article reported that this type of behavior exists because of the anonymity of being in your car where no one can hear you and the likelihood that you’re never going to see these other drivers again that you can openly cuss them out. This makes a lot of sense to me, it could be why I am so quick to say whatever pops in my head. Maybe it’s a form of stress reliever, I read somewhere else that people who swear a lot are less stressed than those who don’t. I do feel great after cussing out a bad driver. I will literally go from singing along to the radio to yelling profanity at some horrible driver and then back to singing along as if nothing happened. Some of my passengers tell me I’m ridiculous for getting so mad. Of course to me it’s completely normal to be angry at the asshole that just cut me off and the clown who doesn’t understand that the left lane is a passing only, not cruising to la la land.

I think the area where I grew up has a lot to do with how I drive. My road rage didn’t just happen, I learned this bad habit. I think of driving like offense and defense. I play defense while driving, especially in the Boston area. You need to be aggressive or you will get eaten alive. Throw your patience out the window, because it’s not going to get you anywhere. You need to be an asshole in order to handle the assholes. Do you know what I mean? I can’t tell you how many times there have been cars driving so close to my back bumper because I was actually driving the speed limit. Or how many times I have been honked at because the light turned green and I didn’t press on the gas fast enough. They are pressuring me to drive faster or get out of their way. Which in turn has forced me to do the same. Now the person in front of me is in my way and I need to pressure them to get out of the way or go faster in order to shake the guy off my bumper. It’s a chain reaction and we are all such manipulative creatures. Let’s pray that these self driving cars come out sooner rather than later. However, I doubt I would have the patience to passenger in one of those. Would you?