Road Rage
2002-10-31, 12:47 p.m.

Did everyone take their Halloween dose of crack prior to getting in their vehicles this morning?

I live in an area with street parking. This means parallel parking on both sides of the streets. Luckily, a lot of the streets are one way which allows for this form of parking and just enough space to drive down the street.

However, this morning some idiot proceeded to park their car�not on the side of the road�but in the middle of the road and go into a building. This left me with nowhere to go as there were cars on both sides and not enough room to maneuver around and a car behind me. I managed to wait for four minutes before I got out and asked the passenger, who was still in the car, to move the car forward and park it in one of the empty spots on the side of the road�instead of, oh I don�t know, in the middle of the road. The passenger looked at me blankly, so I explained once again�but very slowly�he had the keys and he had to move the car all of twenty feet...but apparently he did not understand.

I am not a morning person.

Then, as I was traveling down Route 42, I got pulled over for speeding. Granted, I was going ten miles above the speed limit�but 55mph is a ridiculously slow speed for that road. However, my policy in dealing with cops is to give monosyllabic answers. Example: Q: �Where are you heading?� A: �Work�; Q: �Do you know how fast you were going?� A: �No.�; Q: �Do you have any reason to be going that fast?� A: �No.� And given my extensive experience with the Highway Patrol in Oklahoma and not one ticket to date�it works.

He gave me a warning, I like that cop. Unfortunately, that little incident was also the first time I have been pulled over for speeding in New Jersey. (There was that time that I was swerving and the cop thought I was drunk. But I explained that the passenger was just giving horrible directions--which required more than one syllable.)

So, my brief sojourn with the nice cop on the side of the highway made me close to be late for work, so once I was out of said cop�s sight, I started speeding away. And I come up to an intersection, I was traveling East (the road going north/south was experiencing quite a traffic jam). Another vehicle was approaching the intersection from the West and got in the left hand turn lane, then despite the north/south road being backed up all the way to the intersection, the car makes the left turn and stops in the only place possible�right in the middle of the intersection, blocking my way. Why?

I never understood road rage until I moved to New Jersey.