Hell Hath No Fury

I am an angry person. For all of my soft-heartedness (Disney movies and most Animal Planet shows make me cry), I am generally a smoldering pit of rage most of the time.

I was reading an article the other day and the author said she got road rage while walking. My first thought was not "Wow, this chick's got some issues." My first thought was "Wow, that sounds a lot like me."

Why so angry, bubby? In the words of Karen from Will & Grace, what's the problem, what's happening, what's going on?

It was Sartre who said, "Hell is other people." Therein, I believe, lies the answer to my question: Other People. Others is who gets my goat - Humankind. Not my friends, mind you, but the Populace in General.

There are exceptions, of course, but humans have pretty much gotten dumber and more self-centered and more oblivious and more de-evolved as the years have passed.

More and more, I encounter grocery carts left in the middle of an aisle or laid crossways at the end of an aisle, effective blocking passage for everyone else. It's like trying to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis sometimes, and all I want is a damned box of Cheez-Its. Of course, if I were to take some sort of gentle corrective action - like, say, smash my cart into these idiots' carts with the force of two bighorn sheep ramming heads - *I* would be looked on as the rude one.

Louie Anderson said his father would growl at the public while driving. I growl too - if by "growl," you actually mean "yell." Dennis Miller said that being on the road with other drivers is like being a part of a suicide/homicide pact of which you're not aware, and I fully agree. I sometimes get the sense that some of the people around me have been lobotomized, a procedure which has actually improved their IQ. If you are the first person in line in an arrow-lighted turn lane, and the arrow turns green, for the love of all that's holy, GO!! GO GO GO GO GO!! It doesn't get any greener, and it doesn't stay green long, so GO!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. We're in this downward spiral where "Me" is so much more important than "We," where obliviousness to the fact that other people inhabit the Earth is nearly imprinted now in our DNA, where nothing else matters but what *I* need to do and where *I* need to go and what *I* need to have.

I'm not like that, so I imagine that's where my rage against the human race originates. I assume/expect that people will be considerate and attentive - like me - and when they don't meet my expectations, I go off the deep end.

I don't think my expectations are really all that unattainable. Don't you think courtesy should be second nature? Or is that too much to ask these days?