R-R-R-Road R-R-R-Rage ...

I had occasion to go out today, to pick up dog food and make a pass by the Post Office. Normally during the day, I tend to walk to local shops if I need something, but now and again, I must dare the mean streets of Beaverton ...

It is a good thing that I am not prone to road rage, for if that was the case, I would have had to justify to a jury why I potted at least four people in a single afternoon ...

First was a guy in a left turn lane on TV Highway. He was parked in the lane, no traffic oncoming, and extremely interested something on the seat next to him. I waited a polite thirty seconds while he attended to whatever this was, then politely tapped my horn. He looked up as if awakening from a nightmare, glared at me, and finally moved.

Not a quarter-mile later, I got behind somebody who decided that fourteen miles an hour in a thirty-five mph zone was sufficiently fast -- apparently didn't want to burn up from atmospheric friction or somesuch. Two blocks ahead, a pedestrian stepped off the curb in a crosswalk, and the guy tearing up the road at fourteen slammed on his brakes. The pedestrian could have led a brigade of nursing home residents using walkers across the road before Speed Racer in front of me got close to the crosswalk.

Both of these drivers were men, and from all appearances, younger than I.

I cut older people some slack, so when Granny ahead of me came to an intersection with a stop sign that T-ed at a one-way street and appeared unsure as to the direction she should turn, I didn't honk. Cross-traffic was a block away, stopped at a light, she had plenty of time, but she waited until the light changed and the cars were almost there before pulling out in front of a pick-up doing forty whose driver had to stand on the brake pedal and bring his vehicle to a tire-burning and smoking stop to avoid smashing into her. Good thing he didn't have a gun.

At the post box drop box, in the post office's lot, the person in front of me didn't think to have her mail ready to put into the slot. Kind of like it was a surprise that the box just suddenly appeared there, and Oh, yeah, she had to go hunt for the letter. From the amount of time it took her to find it, I could only assume the letter was locked in a safe under the seat, and she had forgotten the combination. (I sometimes get behind this woman in line at the supermarket. She has twenty items in the ten-items-or-fewer line, the checker is scanning them, and this unenlightened soul stands there, eyes glazed, staring into infinity. The checker finishes, announces the total, and the woman blinks. Huh? She digs her purse out of the basket, opens it in slo-mo, paws through it to find her wallet. Searches through fifty credit cards to find the one she needs, then looks at the clerk. Now how do I do this? You know this woman, you've been behind her, and if there was a trapdoor that opened into a wet and moldy dungeon below, you know you would pull the lever, wouldn't you?)

Those are the four. I don't really count the idiot blocking the driveway at the post office, an abortion protester -- Planned Parenthood is directly across the street -- who waved a sign at at me that said "Abortion stops a beating heart!"

So will my front bumper if you don't move your ass out my way, you fundamentalist twit.

I live well and can't complain, but if I suddenly got filthy rich? I might hire a driver. Or maybe a shooter ...