Gentle Reader beware! I’m pissed. What’s wrong with people?

I’m driving Girl to school this morning and we pass this elderly man out walking his dog, a spaniel mix — maybe a little smaller. I’ve seen him out with his dog, once or twice before, so I smile because I think it’s sweet…until the collar slips over the dog’s head with the leash still attached. The dog seems to think it’s funny and it sort of is. The old man puts it back on over the dog’s head and tries to get the dog to come. Who’s surprised it slips off again? Then the old man hits the dog with the leash. I’m not smiling now. While the dog is crouching he picks it up and instead of just walking up his drive, he sort of tosses/throws the dog in the direction of the house and then hits it again with the leash. At this point I’m stopped in the middle of the street, watching in my rearview mirror. The dog prances off into the street and I think about turning around but instead I take Girl to school.

I drop her at school and am sitting in the long lane of traffic that backs up to get to the intersection of a major highway. It’s just a two lane road with a left-hand turn lane at the intersection. I’m maybe eight or nine car lengths back from that left turn lane but I’m waiting to get down to it. My mouth practically drops open when some moronic woman in a mini-van, four cars BEHIND me, pulls out into the on-coming lane — get this picture, she is driving on the wrong side of the road — and then has to gun it to get out of the way of on-coming traffic…but she makes it down to the left-turn lane and sits there. Of course, so do I in less than a minute, so I’m now immediately behind idiot-brain. This woman waits on about three cars to go by and then she friggin’ turns left in front of a pick-up. No way she didn’t see it. She just wasn’t willing to wait the crucial 15 or 30 seconds for it to pass. I make the left after the truck passes and there’s no traffic (which is clearly visible) and simply cannot believe it when I see her do the SAME THING again. She makes a left-hand turn across two lanes of on-coming traffic. I seriously thought about following her into the office building, into wherever she was going, and waiting until she was in front of a group and telling her that people like her are the reason we have so many accidents.

Instead, I drove home. I’m glad to be home. I’m happy to be sitting in front of my computer where my interactions are all with fictional characters because I don’t know what’s wrong with real people.(n)