“What I meant to say was…” Vol. I

So, yesterday, I'm at the tail end of one of those days. Kids in the car, we're downtown to pick up E. In the normal run of things, this is no big deal. Pull up to an empty slot, call her cell. Done.

Lately, there is construction, so the street is now twice as congested, and slots are not easy to get. I drive past full slots until the end of the block, where there is an opening. The open slot is technically a bus stop, so no luck there. I stay just off the curb, stop, and wait for the light.

Green, and I go, except I stop short. The rightmost lane of this street is so wide, there are cars on my left that are even with me. They’ve assumed that I’m a parked car (behind me is a parking lane) and they turn right across the front of me.

I’m miffed, but this part of downtown has four of these corners, and this happens all the time. I let the first car go without a honk, and muscle in front of the second one to assert my rights.

No harm, no foul. This kind of crap used to get me all riled, but these days I chalk it up to it just being a crappy intersection. Given the layout, and human tendencies, this is going to happen over and over because (and I say this over and over again) there’s a never ending supply of people who haven’t learned about this intersection yet)

‘course, now I need to go around the block again to get E.

I do the lap and this time there’s a spot to pull over early in the block. She’s in and I drive down towards the same corner. There’s a bus at the bus stop, so I’m in the left side of the right line, waiting for the light.

It goes green, and I go, and immediately I see the bus to my right (exactly where I was stopped on my last lap) starts moving. I’m of the belief that stopping in front of a moving bus makes things worse, so I press on and get an earful of the bus’s horn.

I’ve just done what those two cars did to me a few minutes ago. Again, It’s a stupid intersection. I’ve just had this happen to me, and normal driving tendencies still steer me into doing the same thing less than five minutes later.

I’ll spell it out again: Having gone past a line of parked cars, I came even with a bus stopped in front of a bus stop. I’m thinking they are stopped, so I go past them on their left and stop about a car length ahead of them. We’re in the same lane, but it’s really two lanes wide, and each of us can claim to be positioned for a right turn. Easy mistake of fact, but again – this happens all the time and given the cramped quarters, this will never happen at speeds that will cause accidents.

Only the bus driver doesn’t see it this way – when I stop for the light at the end of the new block, she pulls her bus up next to us and motions to E to roll down her window.

She wants to tell us off.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Yes”

“Can you read signs?”

“Yes”

And so on. It has always been my experience that in these moments, the impulse to speak occurs LONG before any meaningful words arrive in the brain.

I start an apology, but she’s off to the races “What you just did was illegal… blah, blah, blah…”

She in mid-screed when my light turns green and I cut it short and take my left. I’m sure most people have had the experience of a situation that ends before you get to say your peace. There is no winning the situation, I was in the wrong, after all. But bus driver has unloaded a verbal barrage aimed at the person she assumes I am, and all I get to do is take it and then drive off.

So, given the impossible scenario of me getting to respond in kind to this person, I would say the following:

Yes. I admit it. I cut you off.

I was going to say that seeing your bus stopped in front of a bus stop without a signal led me to believe you weren’t turning right. That might be one possible explanation, or I could point that our shared lane is wide enough for three cars to sit side by side, making it easy for two vehicles to think they can turn right – Indeed, this very thing happened to me in this very spot not five minutes ago – But, let’s cut the crap, shall we? No, this was a deliberate attempt to put my van and my family in front of a moving bus. That’s what I was after. And not just any bus – your bus. I’ve been trying to cut you off for years and what just happened is the culmination of my life’s ambitions.

There is, of course, another possibility. That I screwed up and knew I screwed up. That despite whatever situational factors played into all this – I honestly feel bad about what happened. Perhaps, given the opportunity to speak to you rationally, I would honestly say “sorry about that,” and we would carry on with our days as better people.

But I don’t get to do that, do I? Instead, all I get is an earful of your pent-up bullshit.

What are you looking to happen here? We’re gonna talk this out while you and I block both lanes of this road? I mean - what the hell, lady?

Rrrgh!