I thought I’d recall an incident from yesterday before I take off for the weekend, and the land of no internets (New Jersey.)

It’s very rare that I use the horn in my car as a tool of emotional assertion, be it anger, excitement, alarm, etc. I’m more apt to throw my finger out the sunroof, open window and yell something like “asshole,” “asshat,” “shithead,” or “dicklick.”

That’s really the most extreme display of anything resembling road rage I can muster. I suppose hand gestures and colorful language can at times be way more inappropriate than the honk of a car horn, but these days I hear so many horns, all the time, I figure if I’m going to be upset, I’m going to do it my way.

Yesterday while coming through town I was stopped at a red light with three cars in line in front of me. The front two had their left hand turn signals on, the one right in front of me did not. There were a line of cars steadily building behind me as we all sat through two full green to red light cycles. I was wondering why the car in front of me didn’t just pull around to the right and go by the two other left hand turners, this way the rest of us could proceed through the intersection as well. At the third green light cycle the car in front of me finally puts on his left turn signal and I want to scream, but I don’t. I put on my right signal, make the move to pass him so I can proceed around him and the cars before him and then through the green light intersection when this Subaru Outback wagon comes up from my rear and cuts me off. No signal, no horn, it’s just there. I get behind it, it’s a woman with a kid in the back seat. Great. At the next light she turns right and I, in a rather uninhibited display, lean into my horn for more than what would be considered a normal time.

There was a mother on the opposite street corner with a child that screamed at me to “calm down” as I wailed my horn and went past the offensive suburban soccer-mom driver.

I wanted to pull over, get out, and tell that mother on foot what the other mother had just done and why my horn response was necessary. At least to me.

So this is it. I’m fed up with mothers trying to stand up to people like me that assert my anger and disappoint in other drivers with things like my car horn, or my finger, or my colorful language. And you know, it’s not even mothers, it’s other drivers that think they’re good drivers, but who SUCK, and should really have their licenses suspended or revoked.

This might be you.

It’s you, the mother who talks on her cell phone with a van/suv full of kids and is so distracted that she blows through a red light in the middle of a busy intersection, while pedestrians are trying to cross the street.

Or the business man who is so fixated on his conference call while driving, that his extremely animated conversation causes his car to veer into oncoming traffic.

It’s the high school/college student who is so busy texting at the stop light that when the light turns green they’re still sitting there, backing up traffic.

It’s even people that think because I’m on a bike at an intersection waiting for the green light you think it’s a race, and I’m going to attempt to jump the light before you on my BIKE. Like a bike could stand up to a TRUCK when it comes to impact.

Maybe in my lifetime drivers test will be mandatory every other year and half of the road population won’t pass. That would be my concrete heaven.