By KATHY GIBBONS
It's the kind of conversation you have with people you know pretty well.
"Yeah, this guy was riding my back bumper. The speed limit was 55, I was going 60 and he actually passed me on the shoulder," said one of the women in the group. "So I laid on my horn and sped up and followed him as closely as I could for a couple of miles. I also made a show of getting on the phone and calling a fictitious police department, like I was reporting his license number."
"Well," said another, "what about just backing off and letting him go on his way, just figuring he's having a bad day?"
"And haven't you ever heard of times when that can backfire, like, what if he had laid on his brakes while you were tailgating him and you smashed into him? Or what if he stopped and got out and shot at you?" chimed in another.
"I'd have shot back," she retorted.
"Do you even own a gun?" someone asked.
"No," she answered, sheepishly.
"Maybe he was rushing to the hospital to see his dying mother," someone else suggested.
"Doesn't matter," she answered. "He shouldn't be driving like that."
"Maybe someone was in the back seat having a baby," another offered.
"Then he should have called an ambulance," she said.
"Maybe it would be better in the future to just take a deep breath and let it go," someone said.
That's my philosophy. Oh, I've called the police on occasion, like when someone passed me on the gravel shoulder of the U.S. 131 expressway as I was in the left lane, passing another car doing around 75 mph. Mostly, though, I hang back, wanting distance -- not contact.
On the other hand, I have inadvertently cut people off in traffic, and almost ran someone off the road recently, not noticing they were there. If I do something like that, I wave to apologize, wanting them to know I'm sorry. A few times, it was only due to the vigilance of these other drivers that an accident didn't occur, as I have averted accidents several times when other people spaced out at the wheel near me.
We are human, after all, which means that on the road, it runs the gamut from making honest mistakes to suffering from terminal obnoxiousness, or what I think of as the "it's all about me" driver.
Still, especially in today's world, it's better to let the actual jerks go on their merry way, and call authorities if you think they are a threat to the public, than to fuel what is ultimately a road rage scenario with potentially disastrous results.
And for all we know, maybe there really is a woman having a baby in the back seat.
It happens.
And so does you-know-what.
Kathy Gibbons can be reached at gibbonskath@ya-hoo.com. For more of Kathy's columns, log on to record-eagle.com/kathygibbons.
