It’s a rare day when my commute doesn’t provide me with some form of entertainment. Some days it’s the nitwits who don’t know how to park in front of my house and leave their monstrous SUVs idling while they walk their kids into school. I know I live across the street from the Middle School so walking my kid to school would be totally obnoxious. But these are, at the very least, 6th graders. Do they really need their hands held for the 30 yard walk from the car to the door? Maybe I’m just a bad mother. But I digress… Next comes the ride to the train station. Usually, my 80 year old mother drives me. It begins with a slow back up out of the garage in her 2004 Nissan Sentra that has 38K miles on it. “Should I buy a new car? I really want a deep red one.” she asks me. “No. You’re car is fine. It has no miles on it, it stays in the garage, it will outlive us all.” So will my mother. Then comes a deep sigh as she looks at the neighbor’s lawn. It’s strewn with crap and usually has weeds growing three feet high. Bad lawn care is a worse offense than drug addiction to my mother. Backing up into the street is always an adventure. I think there is a subliminal message in the tar that says “SPEED UP” because someone inevitably swerves around us as she’s trying to turn onto the road. We usually get to the train station unscathed. I go to Beachmont because Orient Heights is always an overcrowded shitshow. Mom drops me on the corner near Torretta’s bakery. The crossing guard for the elementary school knows us on sight and waves at us every day, “Good Morning, Girls!” I get out and wait for the light to cross the street. I’m a jay walker by nature but this intersection has too many options for me to get killed so I wait for the walk signal and even then cautiously make my way to Dunkin Donuts. Today found me waiting on the sidewalk a bit longer than usual. It was a little later in the morning – our friendly crossing guard had already packed up his reflective orange vest and gone home and the cars were sparse. A black late model non descript Honda pulled out of the D&D parking lot and wanted to take a left to head towards the beach or go left again to RT 16. There’s a small island in the middle of Bennington street so the Honda had to maneuver around that to get to the light. At that exact moment a white, enormous SUV came flying to the light – which was red – the walk signal was on but I wasn’t about to step off the curb. The SUV was driven by a youngish woman – hair in a ponytail wearing a yellow sweatshirt and big sunglasses. She screeched to a stop millimeters from the nose of the black Honda that had not quite made the turn and whose rear end was blocking the lane going the other way. There were no other cars around. The guy in the Honda looked over at the girl in the SUV – she leaned on the horn and revved her engine.  Seriously, she revved her engine – where are we at Thunder Road racing for pinks? He was obviously yelling at her but I couldn’t hear the words until there was a very plaintive – FUCK YOU! –  followed by double middle fingers. She, not to be outdone, returned the gesture and they were at a stalemate. She tried to back up to get some room to go around him but another equally large SUV had pulled up behind her. Honda boy couldn’t pull forward into the lane without gouging his passenger side on the nose of the white SUV. The light turned green and traffic started to flow in the opposite direction and a few cars moved into the lane closer to me. These 2 idiots sat there making nasty gestures and yelling expletives at each other for a solid minute until finally she got some room and backed up to let him out. He flipped her off once more for good measure and roared through the light taking the left onto Winthrop Ave. She flew after him trying to get in front of him and they almost collided in front of Beachmont Roast Beef. I lost sight of them after that but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she is still chasing after him to get in that last middle finger or possibly ram his bumper and push him to a fiery death off the edge of Route 1. The light turned red again. I made my way across to the train station and headed to work puzzled. I don’t drive aggressively. I don’t care when other people are annoyed by my relatively slow driving. I’m never in that much of a hurry to get anywhere. I wonder what these people have to contend with that makes them so ferocious about who gets to go first. Had the lady in the SUV not sped up to get to a (RED) light the Honda would have made his turn and this encounter never would have happened. I would not have been quite so entertained but other than that no harm no foul. Was her car going to explode if she didn’t maintain a steady speed of 22 mph? Was she en route to dismantle an incendiary device? Judging from the way she was dressed I think it was more like she was late for Hot Yoga and was going to get stuck in the back of the class too far away from Johann the hot instructor from Norway. Anyway, the blue line was mercifully quiet this morning. I think God truly only gives us as much as we can handle.

Have people forgotten how to walk on city streets? I’m about 5 minutes away from buying a Supersoaker and filling it with Welch’s Grape Juice just to deter people from stopping short in the middle of the sidewalk. (Why Welch’s Grape Juice? Because as anyone who grew up in Massachusetts knows it’s frigging impossible to get it out of clothing and carpet and curtains.) I know I work in Boston, and I also know it’s a tourist destination but these people aren’t visiting from the far reaches of the Outback where there are no streets let alone sidewalks. How do I know? Because they don’t sell selfie sticks in the Outback and every one of these assholes has one. Last evening I was walking to the train station. It was a nice night so I decided to avoid the 7th circle of Hell, i.e. The Green Line and walk to Government Center. As I was making my way around the Boston Common on Tremont Street I noticed a line of people waiting to get into the movie theater. Maybe 30 people. It was a Tuesday so I am not sure what they were waiting to see but it was hardly a spectacle to see 30 folks milling around on the sidewalk on a nice fall evening. A young couple started crossing the street on the diagonal from the movie theater side of Tremont to the park side. The woman (mid to late 20s, trendy dress and shoes completely unsuitable for sightseeing) walked into the street without checking for cars, her head turned completely over her shoulder looking at the folks in front of the theater. Her companion (same age but much more appropriately dressed) was already firmly planted on the sidewalk while she was literally stopped short in the middle lane pointing and asking him, “what’s going on? what are they waiting for?” I was about 20 yards away and could hear her plainly. He started yelling at her to get out of the street as an MBTA bus was starting to travel towards her at an alarming speed. She managed to meander her way onto the edge of the sidewalk just as the bus flew past, her head still at an angle reminiscent of Linda Blair in The Exorcist, and still pointing and exclaiming about the modest line of people in front of the theater like it was a 4 alarm fire roaring out of control. I was moving quickly down the sidewalk taking in the scene and expecting idiocy. I would not be disappointed. I had headphones on listening AC/DC  but still very aware of my surroundings and still able to hear her onslaught of questions to guy who presumably knew less about it than she did and most certainly cared not at all. I was about to sidestep around her when she decided to step away from the curb – without turning her head, mind you. I was beginning to think it was stuck permanently in that position like an some overused Barbie Doll after a bad night in the Dream House. She slammed into me so forcefully and with such surprise (to her, not me) her giant phone and the ubiquitous selfie stick went flying and landed on the other side of the little wrought fence that separates the park from the sidewalk. She finally turned her head forward and looked at me like I was an alien lifeform who mysteriously beamed down into her personal space. She then ran to the fence to retrieve her phone. Even the $80 pink Otterbox could not save her iPhone. Its screen, reflecting the overcast cast sky, looked like the mangled tinfoil from an old school Hershey bar.  She immediately began wailing about it. She didn’t apologize to me, or even say excuse me.Her boyfriend looked at me apologetically but just shrugged and went to comfort her. I stood there for a second, mourning the death of good manners and politeness, turned up Angus Young and said in my best Irish Whisper, “Fucking tourists.”