by Ryan Christian

Created on: October 10, 2009

For as long as I can remember, I've been witness to this phenomenon we call road rage. Why do I call it a phenomenon, you ask? It's simple. The experience of driving has the ability to make even the most meek, soft-spoken, good-natured person scream heinous obscenities at some jerk as they mercilessly pound on the steering wheel. It doesn't really matter if you know that the person who is the object of you ire can't hear a word you're saying, nor does it matter that you just used words that would make a sailor blush.

What matters is the fact that after the hissy fit you just threw, you suddenly feel better.

Until you are once again aware of the passengers in your car, that is.

I learned road rage from my dad. While generally good-natured, he has always been excitable, and the many trials and tribulations of the road only exacerbate his excitability. Nary a day went by when I wasn't in the car with him, listening to him beseech the other fine users of the United States highway system to quit being idiots and jerks. I am twenty-five years old now, and things have not changed. In all of my twenty-five years, however, I have only seen him extend his middle fingers once; both at the same time. I don't remember why or what it was about, but that's not important. What's important is that my dad, the moral compass of my youth and the executor of all my punishments for being an idiot while I was growing up, unwittingly demonstrated to me that even he was not above flipping the bird to the self-involved drivers on the road that dared to cross him. Sometimes they would even cross him literally. I remember being appalled, but also fascinated, by my dad's blatant display of anger and exasperation through the use of two fingers which hold the power to say so much.

If you can't be heard, then you can be seen, right?

I'd like to be able to use the above preamble to illustrate how I have not inherited that particular personality trait from my illustrious father. I'd like to be able to tell the reader that I am a rock, that I am stoic in the face of deranged drivers who cut me off or don't let me into the right lane when I so desperately need to get off at that exit. But I can't say that. If I did, I'd be lying. And we also wouldn't have much of an article, now would we?

The sad truth of the matter is I am probably worse. Maybe I learned most of what I know about road rage from my dad. I might have learned a bit from my stepfather, too. My stepfather is an aggressive driver,

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