Hey you. Yes, you. The one that is looking at me right now. In
the eye, with a fury so palpable I can feel the rays of hate heating up my
already baking car. Screaming at me to “hang up the mother fucking phone!” Did
I hear you, you ask as I stare in disbelief for a second to verify that, yes,
in fact, this random stranger is actually yelling at me on a public road. “Hang
up your mother fucking phone!” you shout again, and continue to shout profanities
and other commands into the exhaust my car is emitting as I attempt to put as
much distance between your vehicle—and most of all you—my vehicle, myself, and
most of all my 14 month old son, as possible.
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt here, and
assume you have some sort of tragic psychologically based reason for your
behavior. I am going to assume that you did not just take one look at me, see
me driving and wearing a headscarf at the same time, note that I self-identify
as a Muslim woman, and, filled with xenophobic rage, and based only on the one
thing you could tell about me in the three second glance afforded to you by
stopped traffic, and decide that I need to be screamed at and told how to
conduct myself in “this country,” which would be presumably your version of it.
So maybe there was a reason behind it. You’re driving a
motorcycle. Maybe you had a friend die in a motorcycle accident? Hit, maybe, by
a person driving a car and, I don’t know, talking on the phone? Texting? Well,
if that is the case, sir, I am sorry for your loss. That’s a terrible thing to
experience. But, if that is the explanation for your seemingly inexplicable and
unreasonable rage, then don’t you think you would be better served using that
energy doing other stuff, rather than yelling orders at random strangers and
expecting them to follow what you say? You know, doing something that could,
maybe, actually make a difference on this issue? In a positive way. You could,
for example, lobby your local representative for better traffic laws, or start
a fund for the families of victims of motorcycle accidents.
Or, you could ask what your favored presidential candidate
thinks and, of course, plans to do about the issue. Maybe that person is Trump.
If I was the type of person to paint others with broad strokes, I would peg you
for a Trump supporter. White guy of average height, buzz cut, blond goatee-ish
growth on your chin, girlfriend riding behind you who might even be impressed
by your impromptu terrorizing of the random Muslim woman driving next to you,
yellow tinted sunglasses, cargo shorts, dark t-shirt, and right arm so covered
in tattoos you must have never wanted to see it again (TM Russell
Peters—stealing others’ intellectual property is bad). But maybe you support Hilary, who knows? My point is, asking
your candidate may not yield an immediate result to ending the problem of
people dying from motorcycle accidents, but it would probably be more
productive than using terrorist tactics to scare people into yielding to your
immediate demands.
Because if I didn’t try to come up with some excuse for you,
then I would have just had to assume you were overcome by a desire to go on a
racist frenzy. And if I thought that, then hanging up the phone when I am
driving is the last thing I would want to do now. Because if I am going to be
randomly subjected to terrorists’ rage on a regular basis, then I want to at
least have someone in another location on standby to call the police in case the
screaming rant turns violent.
And maybe I would also just want to stick it to you. You
tell me to hang up my phone? In that case, Angry Guy, I don’t think I will. I
think I will keep talking to my husband through this wonderful invention of the
mobile telephonic device, thank you very much. Isn’t it kind of amazing that I
can speak to someone using electronic waves while
simultaneously getting closer to them? And in fact, I may have to talk on
my phone even more when I am driving
now, just to spite you.
At this point, I am sure you can see how counterproductive
that kind of behavior ends up being, in the end. In an effort to attempt to
take advantage of the FREEDOM I have in this country, in spite of someone’s ill
judged attempt to try to forcibly curtail it, I end up doing the exact opposite of what you screamed you
wanted me to do.
Isn’t it funny how terrorism often ends up yielding the
opposite result the terrorists said they were after?
So, Angry Guy, do you see how that could have backfired
terribly?
Now, aren’t you glad now that I am not the sort to
stereotype?
