The beast within

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I am normally a very calm person, and can take a lot of abuse before getting angry, because in most situations it's not worth the effort and one does and says things that may later regret. I have noticed, however, that in some situations it is too easy to cross the line. I know now, for example, that people's dangerous behaviour towards me or my beloved ones brings out the worst in me.

I cycle to work every day and I have been doing so for several years. This morning, some idiot woman didn't want to yield at the STOP sign at the entrance of my workplace. In most cases it's normally an idiot male driver, but it was a woman this time. Please do not label me as sexist, for I am not. Ten past eight in the morning, clear skies, a good 50 metres visibility, no other cars on the road. She actually stopped for a second, looked at me (I was then less than 4 metres away from the STOP), and then kept going. I guess she miscalculated my speed, or thought that I would stop and let her go (I am but a puny cyclist, anyway). I barely managed to stop right in front of her and avoided a collision that would have definitely hurt me more than her. And what did she do? She just waved a hand in a mock apology, quickly dismissing the fact that she had nearly driven over me, and just tried to keep going, expecting me to move swiftly out of her way.

Well, I lost it then. Hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution, years of "love thy brother" brainwashing at church, and my parents' efforts to provide me with an education and good manners went down the drain. I became a caveman. Do not fear, I didn't start hacking at the car with an improvised stone axe or something, no. I wouldn't hurt physically anybody unless in self-defence; I can control myself that much at least. But I stood my ground in front of the car and screamed my lungs off at her. I think I managed to say "learn how to f*** drive", among what sounded mostly like an assortment of inhuman howls. Then I resumed my cycling, and even though I was still trembling with fear and rage, I felt strangely satisfied. I suppose that I liked to have scared the wits out of her, the same way she had done some seconds earlier to me. An eye for an eye, and all that.

Still, I think back and the knowledge that I couldn't stop myself from acting in such a way appals me. As a matter of fact, I despise people who act like that, those who let the animal living within to come out. I find more rewarding to keep my cool, and punish stupidity and sheer incompetence with a witty remark like: "Did you know that the most common meaning of the word STOP is 'to come to a halt'?" I think this behaviour was provoked by my survival instinct kicking in. She nearly hit me with the car, true. But I do not like the feeling of knowing that sometimes, my mind can be so obfuscated by a pure animal instinct, as to completely disregard any notions of decency and common sense. I am so disappointed with myself...

EDIT:
Added missing words and corrected spelling.

[ August 03, 2004, 14:04: Message edited by: Colthrun ]

 

Woman driver

*hides away very fast*

BTW I'm no sexist either but my (bad) experiences when driving are usually with woman.

 

I was in a situation like that once. I was coming home from the store one evening and I had stopped at the intersection's crosswalk to wait for the walk signal.

Now I always wait about 5 seconds after I get the signal to cross to make sure no cars are turning next to me etc... There was one car on the road that night and it was a woman facing me on the other side of the street at the light. I got the light, paused, and noticed she was not turning and had no turn signal on. I proceeded to cross the street between the crosswalk lines. Halfway through I guess she noticed the light was green and peeled out, turning in my direction without looking. Needless to say she plowed into me in the middle of the crosswalk knocking my legs out from me and toppling me onto the hood of her car. Well I was mad I admit, but I think more than anything I was shocked. Shocked that someone could be so careless and ignorant of the world around them as to cause this accident.

To top it all off she did the same thing as the woman you experienced Colthrun. She looked sheepish, waved and then sped off after I pulled myself off her hood. I don't know about Europe but here in Canada since she didn't leave her vehicle it was considered hit and run. I filed a police report, they investigated and in the end despite being out for 2 weeks with a badly bunged up leg nothing came of it since it was her word against mine and no witnesses.

I think be it a man or a woman, today people don't care about those around them, they're only looking out for number one, always in a rush to get to wherever they need to go with no concern for anyone else but themselves.

So be a little mad, maybe it'll help people wake up to the world around them. The thing is not to let your anger get the best of you or take over. We all get angry, it's natural, it's healthy. It's what we do with that anger (negative things) and the power we give it that makes it a bad thing.

And one last thing, this is the kicker. The woman who was driving and hit me was of all a things a doctor. So much for the oath of do no harm. LOL

 

Funny. Mine are mostly with dutchman...

 

ah yes, this **** happens. my gf of 2 years cheated on me with a guy (and this is a majority opinion) uglier than me. as i wasnt there when this **** happened, i just flipped, drank as much alcohol as i could and tried to start fights with every person around me. My friends tell me i tried to start fights with inanimate objects as well, but i think they're taking advantage of my alcohol-induced memory loss. point being, this **** happens. the more mild-mannered the person, the worse the explosion. thats what i think.

 

I just bought a house recently, and me and my girlfriend did a ton of the moving from our old apartment to the house ourselves, taking many many trips between.

On a Sunday afternoon we were just showing up at the apartment for the last car load of the evening. I was tired, irratible and hungry. I was in a BAD mood.

Now there's a stop sign, perpendicular to the street that the old apartment building is on, and its almost directly facing the house. So what seemed like the 600th time that day, we pulled up to the stop sign, stopped, looked. No traffic. Started to pull out to park in front of the house (again, its right there after the stop sign)...

A blue Volkswagon Rabbit going about 45 mph on the residential road, comes out of nowhere, blows the stop sign one block down, and ripping on the horn nearly crashes into us. They come skidding to a halt about 10 yards down the road half sideways, and there's two guys screaming swear words at me.

They were the Dominos Pizza delivery guys. They'd been terrorizing the neighborhood forever, and here I am about to move out and they nearly crashed into me. I was seeing red.

I laid on my horn and left it down for a minute and much to my surprise, the guy on the passenger side started to get out of the car. He was lookin' for a fight!

I was raging at this point.

I pulled my car up to the curb in front of the apartment house, and said to my girlfriend, "Lets get out of the car!" To my surprise, she said, "Yeah!" and her seatbelt was off faster than mine and she was getting out of the car.

I get my seatlbelt off, and open the door, and start lunging out of the car.

I scream at the top of my lungs, "YOU BETTER HAVE GUN!" and step out of the car. After 4 weeks straight of moving heavy furniture down 3 flights of stairs, I was built like a brick wall, I was going to tear this guy limb from limb or die trying.

At this point, the cuff of my right pant leg catches on the seat adjustment lever, and I fall face first into the road.

The shock of being such an oaf, made me laugh my ass off, and as I got up, the Rabbit drove off.

Oh well.

 

*laughs*

Cool lady.

 

An almost identical biking accident happened to my brother. Except with him, the car actually did hit him. He rolled up on the hood, and then rolled off the hood onto the ground. The first thought that went through his mind was, "Whoever did this better hope they broke my f'ing leg, because if I can get up, I'll f'ing kill em!"

His leg was not broken. He stood up, and an elderly woman got out of the car, crying her eyes out. Needless to say, my brother did NOT lay the smack down on an old woman. In fact, my brother feared they may need to call an ambulance for HER because she was having chest pains.

 

ive always been the kind of person to be angry in a calm way, ill talk the talk but i wont shout - that seems to spook people out more, you come off as being more serious, everyone f and blinds when theyre angry its when someone threatens calmly is when people get scared.

one time in the town centre some drunk guy started hurling abuse at me threatening me etc...
and i just stood there, with my hand up as if i didnt want a fight, i said calmly to the guy;
"look, you can start on me if you want, but you really dont want to, not only will i smash your fcuking face in, but the CCTV camera which is watching us will see me trying to back down"
at that the guy ran for it.

 

2 years ago, my friend were driven his bike, I was with him, 50 km/h, in a 4 ways street, in the middle, so we have almost 30mts to our right and to our left, so we can see traffic coming from our right or left; 40mts before an intersection, I see an old lady coming, I saw her watching to her left (where NOBODY could come because the traffic goes right to left in that section) so I say to my friend: be careful, the old lady isn't watching this way; yeah, I saw her; so his start to brake; when we were at 10mts the lady look at our way so like she was scared brakes in front of our way (middle of the street), so my friend thinking she'll just stop there accelerates and tried to go in front of the car, when he do that, the lady start to move again making us buy some land... the bike bumped the front tire of the car, my friend just land there, I crossed over him and landed just cms away from the tire of the car that just stoped avoiding to crush my head...
The lady said later that we came at almost 200km/h, fortunally, there were witness and the lady had to pay the damage...
I had 3 more situations like this, all with women at the wheel, but is too complicated for my poor english.
Like we say here: mujer al volante, peligro constante...
(women at the wheel, constant danger)

 

Well I think I pretty much summed my beast up in the other thread, don't remember its name anymore though.

I can't give any new examples really. There've been numerous times when by threat of law-suit (sp?) the problem has been solved for my advantage. And then the few times where threat of serious damage to the other person with my face red and serious fixed the problem. Thing is, I always explode. I keep the thing inside me until the last, and then I explode. Though I do strike back every step of the way.

I have to comment on that woman driver thing though. Once going to a big fair of somekind, as I'd parked my car and left for the entrance I saw few traffic directors (or whatever you should call them) talking frustrated over why nobody dared to drive to a narrow parking spot nearby. I saw some 2-3 small cars with male drivers consider the spot, wave their heads and go on. One actually tried and failed. Then just after them some female driver came in driving a rather big Mercedes. She glided straight in with speed that was suicidal, and hit the breaks just so it didn't creak. Fitted like a glove. Then she opened the door, stepped outside, locked the door and started walking towards the entrance in one smooth motion. Man I laughed with those traffic directors then, and saying one of the male drivers backing away from that spot looked embarrased would be an understatement.

'Sides, my mom used to be a driver herself. I can say she can outdo my driving skills any day.

 

I am a pretty crap driver myself, and my girlfriend can drive better than anyone I know.

All, please note that the gender of the driver in my first post is irrelevant. My intention was to discuss what makes people lose their heads and how they react. Sorry if I didn't clarify that earlier.

 

I personally have a lead foot. Why I have a radar detector in my car.

Every accident I've ever had involved an older person who shouldn't of still been driving in the first place. I think West Virgina should change its state flag to a picture of a steering wheel with the top of some persons head with two little hands reaching up to the steering wheel.

 

Colthrun, I'm not a cyclist, but in my years as a driver I've come to operate off a simple assumption: that everybody else on the road is a complete moron. Not that it stops me from being frustrated occasionally (especially when I have a shift just after peak hour and have to drive through the city to get to work), but so far I'm accident-free.

I used to suffer from what I called "Red Shift" - everything went kind of blurry, the edges of my vision went a little red and my brain felt like it was getting a series of static shocks when I got extremely mad. I'm not a big guy, but everyone who's seen that side of me says that the transformation is frightening. Thankfully, I've grown past that, and as a result of it, I'm generally walking around with enough self-loathing and guilt to start a major religion. But it's like Enagonios says, it's always the people who hold it in that explode the most violently.

(starts sharpening axe)

On the whole "woman driver" issue: well, in my experience, the sorts of driving mistakes/annoyances that women commit tend to be less dangerous than the ones made by men. Especially the 40-something middle-aged executives who drive a company car and expect everybody to get out of their way while they do 140km/h in an 80 zone. The only "dangerous" women drivers I've encountered are the young ones, and that's often not a gender thing - it's more a power thing, and the guys are worse.

...and yes, I am from an outer suburban area (read: the sticks), which means utes, hotted-up cars and (mostly) guys who live vicariously through the accelerator.

 

I tend to be the kinda pedestrian/cyclist who pisses drivers off. I never yield to a car when I cross the street; unless I know for certain that the car will hit me. And I cycle as recklessly as possible; running red lights and stop signs with abandon. I've almost gotten myself killed once or twice; but that's never done more than just amuse me (probably because I've never actually been hit).

I'm a very, very calm, generally apathetic kinda guy; so I never actually explode at anyone. I'm the quiet type; who bottles everything up inside.

As for my beast within; I know it's there. I can feel it start coming to the surface whenever I fight with my family or this certain idiot at work gives me cause to want to try and kill him (which he does more often than not). I never actually succumb though; I just walk away before it really gets out. I'll let out tiny bits of my anger in spurts of rage or frustration; but it's never more than the slightest hint of what I've buried inside myself. I actually believe that this may in fact be worse than letting it out though; since I can feel myself getting angrier and angrier with each fight/argument at home or at work. I know I'm gonna explode one of these days, but there's no way for me to know how, why or when...and I can't even begin to fathom the damage I'll cause (to myself or anyone else) when I do finally break.

 

Everyone who knows me a bit, knows that bad things don't happen when I'm shouting. Bad things happen when I'm speaking in a slow and silent voice.

Blood rage? Not really. But when I see someone means it seriously, like aiming for the eyes or injured parts of the body, I stop handling it with kid gloves. Little damage, lots of pain and thinks happen fast. Doesn't matter who it is, he must be down and disarmed. I will probably help the person up when it's done, but he must be down and disarmed ASAP. Serious action merits serious reaction. When you mean it seriously, I mean it seriously. My own brother, when he aimed for my wounded toe (post surgery), got a quick turn kick in the ribs from the other leg, sending him up in the air. I don't lose control, but I definitely am in combat mode.

However, just being a naughty boy doesn't make it. Nor does "challenging" me or whatever. I remember one guy... he was a perfect idiot. At some point he tried to "challenge" me after I commented on his upbringing (he said "get the **** out of here" to me at a party where I was a joint host). I actually really wanted to do something painful to him, but I duly replied that he was unable to challenge me. I said he was, however, always free to challenge his luck, assail me and see what happens. Nothing happened.

The other time, the situation reoccured. This time, I said the same line and left myself open to attack in a seemingly negligent way. It didn't come. Later that evening, he felt had some right to a friend's girlfriend, bitching about it aloud for some time. As she was leaving and I going to bid her goodbye, he blocked my way throught the corridor with his arm. It wasn't Red Shift. It was White Shift. The scum dared touch me. The sound was actually very loud when his arm hit the nearby wardrobe. I didn't even look at him. Someone took him out for a walk and only one person came back.

 

I am very much like Faerus in this matter in that I never EVER go off at people. Part of this is because I'm so emotionally sensetive as to almost be an empath. If I upset someone my gut wrenches in knots of guilt, and I spent the next day or so acting like their personal slave out of pure shame. It's actually quite a sickening thing to witness, so over the years I've learned to just never lose my temper, no matter how wound up i am. This of course leads to major bottling up of emotions, and one day I just know I'll blow my top and tell peeps exactly how I really feel, but fingers crossed, it won't be anytime soon