May you be surrounded by people just like you

Tuesday has arrived, dark and damp.  The cloud cover has kept the temperature up (it is currently 5º C, 41º F), but that is still not exactly shirt-sleeve weather.  Today's forecast calls for rain all day.

Another round of automotive bullying behavior this morning, alas.  It happens frequently when you drive a small car.  Folks with issues (had a fight with their lover, pissed at something another driver did, late for work, listening to AM talk radio, who knows?), usually driving much larger vehicles (which, to a Miata, is almost anything else) seem to feel they can safely take out their personal frustrations on smaller cars.  Whenever someone feels less in control they seek out someone or something they think they can control, and on the road that often comes down to car size.

Today's example came flying up behind me in a mid-sized truck on an otherwise deserted side street.  Came right up to within mere inches (less than a foot, certainly) of my bumper and sat there as we drove the few blocks to the next intersection.  Initially, I thought they were going to hit me.  When it became clear they were settling in to ride my bumper, it became clear this was intentional, aggressive, bullying behavior.  So I kept my pace and made no adjustments, as if I didn't see them.  If they were going to hit me, they would, but not because of anything I did.

At the next intersection we had to wait through a red light.  Once we got there, with other cars around, they backed off and stopped at an almost-reasonable distance behind me.  Plus and minus: on the plus side I didn't respond and they didn't escalate their behavior to the point of contact, and they got no apparent response to their actions.  On the minus, as so often seems to be the case with bullying, there were no consequences for their behavior.  They will do it again and someone else may not be as lucky.  It is tempting, at times like that, to will karma to our own ends. To wish them a day filled with encounters with drivers exactly like them––a day filled will themselves, or to wish them a sudden and catastrophic engine failure that takes them off the road and away from other drivers altogether, or worse.  Of those options the one most likely to occur is that they will be surrounded by drivers just like them.  That kind of behavior almost always triggers more of same, so they stand a good chance of spawning rebounding aggressive behavior.  They will also leave a swath of the kind of anger that bullying leaves in its wake, all along their commute to wherever.

A three-tune sound track this morning, owing to the length of the second track (11:45). The last track, coming up just as I pulled onto campus, may have been karma's way of saying to me, "Let it go, let bygones be." And so it is.

 - Fountains of Wayne: New Routine
 - Sigur Rós: Track 8
 - Robert Walter's 20th Congress: Bygones Be