Some People

I take back what I just said about wanting to keep things short and sweet. I have to vent about something and it may take awhile, so you may as well skip over this if the amount of words intimidates you.

Sometimes people really bug me. Bugging me is putting it lightly. I hate it -and I mean HATE IT- when people think they have the right to go off on someone, get all high and mighty, act like someone has committed the worst offense in the world, tell it like it is... whatever you want to call it. All without knowing the person they are "attacking" or the whole picture of the situation they're upset about. What gives someone the right to say whatever they want, many times using whatever foul language they want, to a perfect stranger? And often times the unsuspecting person's "offense" was a fraction of what this someone makes it out to be.

Maybe I'm just too sensitive. If anyone is ever upset with me (friend or stranger) I have a tendency to replay situations over and over in my head trying to figure out what I did wrong, how they might have interpreted something I may not have meant, if I was unaware of doing something to hurt them, what I could have done different, and on and on and on. I really hate upsetting or offending people and when that does accidentally happen, I tend to dwell on it too much. So I know that's one of my faults... I value other people's (sometimes stupidly especially strangers -don't ask me why) opinions and I don't want them thinking I'm a mean or bad or inconsiderate person. Because I'm not. At least I hope I'm not.

This is obviously not the case in point, but for example... (an example of how much and how long I can let things get to me) a long time ago -like seriously eight years ago- I was driving home from work during rush hour. Now the last major intersection I had to go through before I got into my nieghborhood, was a right hand turn at this light. Pretty much everyone coming the way I was coming from was also trying to turn right. Everyday. So this right hand lane gets pretty backed up, and on this particular day was even more so. By the time I noticed that I needed to be in the right hand lane a little further back than usual, I had already missed the "end" of the line and so I slowed way down, turned on my blinker, and began looking for a gap to make my way over. I saw an opening, so I moved into that lane. I then opened my sunroof, turned up my music, got a little more comfortable in my seat, and preceeded to creep along with the traffic. The next thing I know, there's a guy on his motorcycle up along the right side of my car on the shoulder of the road yelling at me. May I also point out at this point that he is not wearing a helmet (yes we have a helmet law in Oregon). And he has a little kid on the back of his "crotch rocket", as some people so fondly refer to these bikes. He yells at me with language that would make any halfway respectable person blush, let alone the eight-year-old hanging on his back, that I need to "#$%$% watch where I'm going...%^&^%*@# could kill someone... !@#$%* self absorbed and unaware... like every other %$#@ car on the road... $%^&@# kid on my back for ^&*#$ sake."
Nevermind the fact that I HAD seen him there before I moved over into his lane. And I HAD actually turned my head and looked at him, not just checking my mirrors. And I MADE SURE I had plenty of room to get in front of him because I had a boyfriend at the time who rode a motorcycle and I was deathly afraid of not only him getting hit on his, but I became obsessively aware of any bike within like a mile radius of my car so as not to ever ever hit a rider ever or ever cut them off, make them swerve, or ever cause them trouble on the road ever. (did I mention obsessive?)
So my point is, I know I had room, I know I didn't really put him in danger, but when he got all freaked out and over reacted I felt like the worst person on earth. Of course I felt a little defensive, and a minute of thinking who's more at fault... I mean if you, Mr. Motorcycle Man, are so worried about your safety why aren't you wearing a helmet and if cars are so dangerous to motorcycles why do you have a 50 lb child on your bike?!?
But mostly I replayed it over and over in my head... what did I do wrong, could I have missed something? is everything he said really true???
I really had to finally tell myself I was really looking out the best I could, and that guy was just an idiot who maybe had a bad day, was stuck in traffic, and flew way off the handle. Nothing to do with me personally.
My question is, if someone steps on your toes, what good does it do to call them names or insult them or make them feel like crap?

Anyway.
So.
Well.
You know what I mean?

You may have guessed I came across an incident today. No big deal. It just got me thinking about how people can be and all that stuff. Sorry for the random venting.
Just don't be rude to people you don't know, okay?