this is basically what i looked like everyday, but if the car was blue...
however it wasn't a couple years later, when i was eight years old, and my brother was 15 that i realized i had a plan for this money. while he was busy trying to find a way to convince my parents to buy him a car, i watched and listened carefully. i can remember several long arguments as he pleaded his case. i vowed then and there i would not have to go through that. i decided to open a bank account and save all the money grandma jeanie gave me, so that on june 20, 1995 i could not only get my license, but also have my own car.
so for the next eight years, i dutifully took that check from grandma and walked over to the ol' sesloc and deposited that 100 bucks (except one christmas when i was ten years old, the weberstown mall beckoned me to buy my first leather jacket- a must when you are ten years old, but also a bit sketchy cuz afterall you are in stockton). since the math might be too difficult, i'll spare you- by the time i was 16 years old, i had close to $2000 bucks.
lucky for me, my mom's friend was selling an old volvo. not just any old volvo, but a 1982 sparkly blue turbo. this thing was bad A-S-S. not like the range rovers and beamers you see crowding the parking lots of SLOHS, this thing was growly, chunky and pure awesomeness. clearly the hottest thing to grace that parking lot in a long time. i can't tell you how cool it was to have my OWN car. FREEDOM!
after acing (that's right i got 100) on my driving test, i hit the open road. i immediately paid to get a cd player installed so i didn't have to do the ol discman with tape adapter biz my friends were wrestling with. i blasted indigo and sarah, smoked newports and just drove.
life was good.
but of course, like all new drivers i found myself in a new world. from learning to pull over for ambulances, to letting the car to your right go first at a stop sign, there was lots to learn. there was also lots to get pissed off about. like most teenage drivers i rolled through stop signs, sped, cut people off, and even flipped the bird more than i should have. this sort of behavior not only landed me some tickets and accidents, but also a few other incidents.
it was a tuesday afternoon and i had just pulled out onto johnson near SLOHS. as i pulled into the left lane i saw a car come speeding up super fast behind me. i pulled in front of it and accelerated as not to piss them off. however, she had other ideas. i should have clued into the 80's red camero and realized that this was not gonna end well. she came up super fast on my tail and started honking and waving, like i'd run over her cat or something. i was looking at her in my rear view mirror as she ranted and raved. i didn't feel like i had really done anything so wrong, so i decided to piss her off by going super slow. this really made her angry, so she decided to pass me. as she was passing me, i sped up and she got caught between me and two cars. by now she's super pissed, so much so, that she slows down and rolls down her window yelling at me to pull over. at this point i started to get a bit nervous, cuz my last altercation didn't exactly prove me a winner. so i tried to ignore her and just speed up. but instead, she got behind me and just kept yelling and motioning for me to pull over. this went on for what seemed like forever. i kept trying to loose her, but she was committed to settling this.
finally i realized that she was not gonna let this go. so i signaled to the right and pulled over on pismo st. i'd just calmly explain to her that i was sorry and we could just forget about the whole thing. she quickly signaled and pulled up right behind me as i came to a stop. i waited in my car as she opened her door. as soon as her door had closed and she began to walk my way, i saw that she was still clearly very pissed-- no raiders bomber jacket, but she was easily in her early 30's and quite possibly high on angel dust (or so i thought). just as she was about 5 feet from my window, i sped away. i watched in my mirror as she ran back to her car, but there was no way. she was safely behind me. another disaster averted, this one without tears, but a pounding heart nonetheless.
so with that said, please, do tell.
'have you ever road raged someone?'
11 comments:
i'm such a tailgater. i hate being tailgated and i too will slow down to make you mad if you do it to me...but i have no problem tailgating. there is not enough time in the day for me to drive behind slow drivers with cartoon families on the back of their swagger wagon. i'll admit that sometimes road rage can be a tad bit satisfying.
I'll admit... I've never had any road rage. I'm too paranoid that something would go wrong and I'd end up crashing my car and dying. But that story about the lady is hilarious.
one time i was driving back home to the city after working the day in petaluma and right before i got to the golden gate bridge, this car came flying by and cut me off so bad. it's hard to describe in words, but it was inches away from causing a gnarly accident with a lot of cars going very fast. i was so pissed i honked and flipped the guy off. but then while on the bridge, he got behind me and stayed right on my ass the whole way to my house. there wasn't any parking nearby my apartment so i had to circle around for a good 15 minutes and he was following me the entire time. i was freaked out about going home because i didn't want him to see where i lived, but it was dark and late and i didn't have anywhere else to go. needless to say, i made it home safely but scared shitless. i was barely able to sleep that night i was so scared. i never saw him again, but that kinda taught me a lesson. people are crazy!
by the way, i loved how you sped off! that is awesome. i bet that lady remembers you.
about the volvo - i didn't know you bought it yourself, way cool. it was always fun cruising in the volvo.
I grew up in the city and had to take my drivers ed in the heart of San Fran. ROad Rage was just part of driving. I never put a Jesus fish on my car because I knew that I'd be flippin of a lot of people and didn't want them knowing I was a Christian. I've mellowed out a lot not.
Oh boy..road rage..Here is a quick story. Try to make it short. Back in the day my dad had decided that an old VW bus was the way to travel from Washington to California to visit the Grandparents. The thing was a piece..not one of those nice restored ones, but a piece. So it went real fast on the highway too. 60 maybe. Anyhow, I must have been 13..just starting the teen years, where I thought I was all that. We were somewhere out in the valley, think Fresno or something. We were in a tone of traffic, could have been Oakland. I don't really remember. Just a lot of traffic and so we were going slow and this car kept tailgating us and my dad was getting upset, so I thought I would take care of it myself by giving them the bird. Oh man, bad idea. The people in the car looked as thought they had raiders jackets on and could cause some sh@#t..They started swerving around us and dad wanted to know why..I kept my both shut. Call this one a close call..we made it out of there safe. Never did that again!
I road raged a deer at 65. He got even when he took out the front of my truck. Jerk.
When we lived in Arcata, I was on my way home to our beachfront property in Manila from class and as the 2 lanes merged into one, a car that was in my blindspot AND in the lane that ended (so he should have politely backed the F off), sped up and "pushed" me off the road. I had to slam my brakes and was scared sh**less that I was about to either hit a telephone pole or go off the extremely deep (3 ft) embankment. Needless to say, I tailgated him to his destination (a seedy warehouse in Manila) and parked so he couldn't pull a Holly and got out and demanded an apology. I didn't get one, some yelling ensued, and he threatened to get out of his car and kick my booty, but I didn't back down. I just told him if that made him feel more like a man after running me off the road and nearly killing me, bring it on. I eventually got back in my car and made it home before I broke down sobbing. I really was frightened at the time that I was going to wreck and I think that adrenalin rush is what powered my stupid pursuit of an apology.
I've definitely had some road rage in my years of driving but nothing like your story. i did on the other hand have a Volvo very like yours!! My first car was a 1979 Volvo 242 DL, and it was light periwinkle blue. i LOVED that car!!!!!!!! I cried when I sold it.
not proud of it but I definitely had my moments. I remember when I first got my license...I would race people down Madonna road and would then cut them off as quickly as I could and slow waaay down. yea, that was not good. but I wanted to see how fast my grandpa's brand new 1992 Toyota
Corolla could go.
what can I say? I'm asian.
so sweet
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