Anger Management- Blowing to Avoid Blowing Up

I keep a list of possible blog topics saved on my laptop. One of the topics I have is on Road Rage. I hadn’t really felt properly inspired to complete it yet, but that was before a couple of events that happened yesterday.

The first event was actually quite funny. My cube mate unexpectedly gave me a birthday present. Good things do indeed come in small packages. She gave me a small package called the Stress Buster Box. The box contained a booklet and a blow up toy: a red bat. I thought it was a little telling that someone that I have barely known 2 months bought me an anger management gift. Hmm. After thanking her, my first thought was to blow up my bat and start smacking my laptop (the client one which once again was HANGING for no good reason). I decided the wiser and probably more professional course of action was to read through the booklet instead. It actually contained practical information about anger management. I was amused by some of the suggestions, especially once I realized I was already doing some of them.

The second event happened while trying to get back to my hotel this evening. Normally, my commute is no more than 10-15 minutes. Today was about an hour due to road closures in the area because of all the recent rain and subsequent flooding. Soooo, as you can imagine, sitting in traffic and dealing with all the people weaving in and out of lanes jockeying for position is enough to make me want to turn kamikaze and start ramming into people. (It’s a rental car, right?) Instead, I found myself frantically reaching for my iPod so I could listen to Keane or Sade or even Enya for crying out loud. As I reached into my purse, I saw the Stress Buster kit. That’s all it took. I started to laugh because I could just imagine what it would look like to other drivers to see me:
a) blowing up the bat,
b) whacking the dashboard, steering wheel, etc with said bat, and
c) doing all of the above while wearing my iPod earphones and singing along to Keane or Sade, or even Enya for crying out loud. (You really can’t sing Smooth Operator and carry off road rage convincingly)

So, as I said, just seeing the kit was enough to take the steam out of my road rage. So I just listened to the iPod and sang at the top of my lungs until I got to the hotel.

Some of the ideas I had for the original blog included:

1. Playing whack-a-mole with other cars. I think about a giant mallet coming out of the top of my car and smashing the cars in front of me. Especially when they are in the left lane and won’t get out of my way.
2. Having a message board on the top of my car offering “suggestions” to other drivers. The logistics are too hard for that one.
3. The James Bond car- complete with machine guns that appear at the touch of a button from my dashboard.
4. A Road Rage Language and Gesture Primer- Learn how to read lips while looking in your rear view mirror at the driver you just cut off. Learn the different hand gestures used in driving. Chances are that gesture the other driver just gave you didn’t mean “Hey I like that necklace you’re wearing!” but was probably more likely something like “I’m going to rip that ear bud out of your head and strangle you with it. GET OFF THE PHONE!!!!) Wow, imagine your embarrassment.
5. Who’s Honkin? –A primer on the language of horns. Tell the difference between the friendly tap as if to say “Excuse me, hate to interrupt, but perhaps you might have noticed the light has changed?” and the less friendly laying on the horn as you are a) trying to recall your deductible on your collision insurance, b) allowing the wail of the horn to act like a TV censor covering your string of expletives, and c) loudly questioning the other driver’s heritage and wondering if one or more of his ancestors were perhaps related (and then married) to each other, thus diluting the gene pool and making good driving skills a genetic impossibility. Tragic!
   

Fun ideas, but I suppose I shall just have to be satisfied with the red bat. Wow, it’s weird to dedicate an entire topic to a phallic shaped blow up toy that says “The Stress Buster” along the side. That’s sooo not where I thought this blog would be going.