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.