Normal Rage

Bit of amateur psychology for you...

I don't get road rage. I don't get house rage. I don't get relly rage. I even know that I definitely don't get air rage... I just get bog standard, normal, no frills RAGE. It's a blessing, I know. It saves so much time that would be spent analysing and pigeonholing certain rage 'types'. I do my best to keep it under control but it has a habit of seeping and one of the best ways to cause it to seep is while driving.

It never used to be like this. There was a time when I would be driving along in my beloved old beige (with a brown vinyl roof) Morris Ital 1.3l and someone would draw alongside at the traffic lights or overtake me and it wouldn't bother me in the least. The fact that I couldn't go faster than 60mph without the car trying to shake the fillings out of my head had something to do with it. That was over ten years ago. I've got a Toyota MR2 Mk2 now. It's not the fastest thing out there but it's faster than most and it can keep up with the rest. When I got it, I had a right blast. It's handles like a go kart in the dry and I think its one of the best looking motors you can get on a budget. It's so much fun.

But something changed and I think it happened recently. My driving is no longer motivated by fun but by rage. Instead of "That's a nice car. If I give it a squirt, I wonder if they'll play" it's now "He is trying to climb into my boot! I must destroy him!" So today, I set out for a trip into Poole and I wasn't going to get angry at ANYTHING. I picked the most relaxing CD I could find and I was off. I drove through my sleepy little town and no problems. Got to the by-pass, cool as a cucumber. I was chugging along at about 45mph and I'd left a decent gap between me and the car in front who was accelerating away. It was all chill. I was in the easy listening section and nothing could harm me.

Then the spider sense started tingling. A yellow Beetle was coming up behind me fast and I knew they were going to try and overtake me... on a single carriageway... This was UNACCEPTABLE! All I needed to do was drop it into second, cane it up to 6,500 rpm, hit third and that mother would be HISTORY! EAT MY DUST! HAHAHAHAHAHA! This happened in the space of about half a second before I caught myself. DEEP BREATH. It didn't matter. I let them overtake and they ended up crawling all over the back of this Jaguar for about 2 miles while traffic was passing in the other direction. No hassles. I got to the roundabout at the end, the Beetle was going right and had to queue and I was going left so I passed it back with a little smirk. Where did that get you, Hey? All that effort and I still got to the end of the road quicker. You complete MUPPET! HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA! Whoa! Stop! Another half second of madness. What's the point? (and here comes the bang...) It's a waste of energy!

I had three other incidents on my trip. A kiddie in a boyed-up Cavalier was trying to get me to race, a hapless 944 cut me up with malice of forethought and a BMW who seemed determined not to let me change lanes. I rode above all of these without so much as a single grunt of Anglo-Saxon profanity.

There's no doubt that my choice of motor causes some of these problems but I seem to have found my neutral space for an afternoon. If I can continue this and chill my boots enough, perhaps I can start having fun again...


By the way, the CD was New Adventures In Hi-Fi by REM. (an obscenely underrated album in my opinion) I was very serious about staying chilled...