You Turn!

Had I lived in LA, I would have undoubtedly died in shooting incidents dozens of times over by now. As things stand, the only thing that suffers from events like the one this afternoon is my adrenaline gland and my faith in the human condition. On the upside, I permit myself a slight feeling of pride at the way I handled it.

For tomorrow’s PhD ceremony, I needed to pick up the fancy costume that I, as paranimf (a kind of best man) have to wear. It would have been cleaned, pressed and generally poo-had, so I chose to take my car into town for the chore instead of riding my bicycle and tying the costume to the rack.

Driving into town is an adventure these days. There is so much construction going on, so many unexpected closed and temporarily one-way streets, that the resulting map would put the formal maze of any English estate to shame. I navigated my way towards my destination (the Ceintuurbaan) with a combination of skill, luck, and computer gaming experience, until I made it to my destination.

Immediately upon turning onto Ceintuurbaan, I spotted a small but suitable parking spot. Unfortunately, it was on the other side of the road from me. I checked my mirrors, seeing only a few cars behind me, and the road ahead, which was clear, and slowed down to swing into a perfectly legal U-turn.

Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing the state of “mind” of the Beemer-driver three cars behind me. I don’t know how it is in the States, but in this country, Beemerers and Benzers are all crooks, jerks, morons, or a creative mix of these three. The guy I am talking about turned out to be no exception.

Maybe his mistress hadn’t put out. Perhaps his wife had nagged him for not putting the thrash out. Possibly his latest drug deal had fallen through. Or, most probably, the guy was simply in a permanent state of rage, brought on by the knowledge that he was unjustly skipped when common sense and human decency were distributed. Whatever the reason, this fellow had been simmering behind the wheel for minutes at the slow crawl the city traffic was producing (a mere 30 mph – the legal speed limit – where he would have preferred 50), and the obstruction I produced brought him to a boil.

I checked my rear view and wing mirrors to ensure the traffic behind me was doing nothing reckless like illegally overtaking on the tramway, and turned into my U. Three seconds later, as I crossed the rightmost tram track, a huge silver Beemer was suddenly speeding over the tram tracks at 40 mph towards my left thigh. Thanks to God’s gift of ABS, the BMW halted about a foot from my door and I was able to complete my U, albeit hugely shaken by the near-miss.

It was then that I noticed the Beemer still stalled on the tram tracks, and the driver rolling down his window to shout at me. I rolled down mine to hear what kind of colorful apologies he would produce. Instead, a stream of abuse rolled from his lips, almost impossible to reproduce, but boiling down to: “Don’t do a fucking U-turn when I’m behind you, you moron!”

Still shaken by my brush with traffic death, I unwisely replied:

“Don’t overtake on the tram tracks, you idiot!”

Then I rolled my window back up and proceeded to squeeze my car into the tiny parking space.

When my parking puzzle was almost completed, I glanced into my wing mirror to see the silver Beemer suddenly appear, hit his warning lights, and park illegally in the bike lane. I sighed a weary, cynical sigh, rolled down my window again, and waited for the driver to approach me with some additional abuse.

He wore a fake tan, gold chains, and a colorfully clashing track suit, as well as a furious expression. He stalked over to my car, bent to my window and stuck his head in.

“What the fuck do you think you are, you moron?! Do you think you can just make a U without looking, and then mouth off to me? You moron! First you slow down three times in front of me…” At this point his account became more and more imaginative. “… Then you turn into a U without looking behind you! You moron!” By now, he was practically shaking with rage and squeezing my door so hard his knuckles were white. It was all so trite and tiresome. “And then you mouth off to me? I should just punch you around, you moron!”
I waited patiently for a break in his tirade and interjected:

“Are you quite finished?”

“What?”

“I said: Are you quite finished?”

“Don’t you talk back to me, you shit! What did you just say?”

I decided to ignore the contradiction in this last statement, and repeated helpfully:

“Are you quite finished?”

This set off a whole new string of creatively abusive and threatening phrases, ending in a three-times repeated:

“I’m waiting for your apology, you shit!”

By then, I’d had more than enough of his crap, his ugly face in my window, his cologne mixing with the fresh air in my car, his abusive language spoiling the song playing on the radio. I had half a mind to get out of my car, look down upon his no doubt balding pate, square my shoulders, call him some names of my own, and let him take his best shot before decking him and dancing a few dents and scratches in his precious jerkmobile.

Instead, I took a deep breath, squeezed my wheel, and proceeded to turn off my radio, get my things together, and generally make it very obvious that I was getting on with what I originally came here to do.

“I’m waiting for your apology, you shit!”

“I think this conversation is over,” I suggested. He straightened up with an incredulous look on his face. I rolled up my window and completed the job of parking as he stalked back to his car, still muttering curses and abuse.

I got out and as I crossed the street to pay for parking, I rashly waved at him and blew a kiss. He revved his engine and sped off.

Doing a U-turn, of course.