I had a horrible encounter this week which left me really shaken. My son travels to school by train and, most weekdays, I drive to pick him up. I always do a U turn before parking so that I am facing in the right direction to go home again. So do all the other people collecting commuters. Anyway I checked the road was clear on both side and swung my car round when there was a startling blaring of horn. Another driver, a man of about sixty, had sped right up behind me and was incandescent with rage because I had held his journey up by a nanosecond while I completed my turn. He rolled down his window and spewed the most vile barrage of abuse at me. A sensible person would have just driven off but, I rolled my own window down and asked why he felt the need to be so aggressive. Oh my goodness, he went nuts. The veins in his neck and forehead were bulging and I’m sure he would have like to have hit me. There was a lone woman sitting in the back of his car looking sheepish and I wondered if she was his partner or if he was actually a taxi driver. Anyway I was quite shaken up by his frothing-at-the-mouth behavior but glad it had happened to me and not one of my children. I am sure that he would not have behaved that way had I been a big, burly man. I did also wonder how anyone can go through life sustaining that level of anger, would he go home and take it out of the people he lives with? My dad and my husband are both calm people who I have hardly ever heard raise their voices thank goodness, I’m just not used to being screamed at like that.

Then today I was in the supermarket when the woman behind me began to put her shopping on the conveyor belt before I had unloaded mine. It was a little irritating but I didn’t take much notice. However a couple of her items spilled over onto my own pile and the cashier rang them up as mine. It was easily sorted out and the woman whose shopping it was said “thank goodness you’re not one of those angry people”. Yes, angry people, they are everywhere and they frighten the heck out of me. My aunt, almost ninety, took her dog to the vet and pipped a woman in her twenties to the last parking spot. The young woman called my aunt a wh*re. How disgusting and unnecessary. If one of my kids spoke to an elderly lady in that way I would consider myself a failure as a parent. Again, my aunt, a feisty woman, was very shaken up .

My advice to my children who are all out in the world with these walking time-bombs, is avoid confrontation at all costs. If you are driving and someone irritates you don’t beep them, just let it go. Don’t make eye contact and don’t gesticulate. If you are at a bar or party and you sense the atmosphere become menacing, leave straight away. It’s just not worth it. I remember a man screaming at my mum at a bus stop when I was a very young child, these perpetually furious people have always been amongst us. Yes, they may be having a bad day but there’s no reason to take it out on the rest of us.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha