Thursday, May 11, 2006

White Van Man Strikes!

As well as being a lapsed socialist, I’m also an effete middle class coward. Let me tell you why…

It was a beautiful spring evening last night, so I enjoyed the ride home on my scooter. Although it’s probably dangerous, it’s a great experience to ride just wearing a t-shirt with sun blazing, cooled by your velocity.

I reached the parking spot outside my house and the white van in front of me suddenly decided to execute a u-turn, nearly hitting me. Shaken, I uttered a ‘Fuck me!’ Now, considering I’d nearly been hit by a large vehicle, you wouldn’t have thought this was unreasonable, but I’m guessing that van driver assumed I’d insulted him. My evidence is that leaned out of his window and, with enraged pink face, shouted:

“You taking the piss? Don’t you fucking take the piss out of me!”

I sighed and told him that I wasn’t insulting him, I was just shocked as he’d nearly hit me. His response was to get even angrier:

“You giving it fucking large, are you? You want a fucking fight, I’ll get out now and give you a fucking slap!”

Now maybe I should have just shut up at that point (or kowtowed to his alpha male-ness maybe) but I just said that I didn’t want a fight, I wanted to park my bike and that he should chill out a bit. This only enraged him further.

“You’re not parking your bike; you’re taking the fucking piss!”

At this point my outrageous provocation became too much for the poor man and he exited his cab to confront me. By this time he was purple in the face with rage and, as he squared up to me, I could see that (a) he was six inches taller than me and (b) a fight was becoming an inevitability. Maybe he’d had a really crappy day and wanted to take it out on someone? God knows, if he was like that all the time, he’d never actually drive anywhere – he’d be stopping every hundred meters to give someone a ‘slap’.

“You fucking cunt, you’re giving it large! You wanna give it large? C’mon – you wanna fight, I’ll give you a fucking fight!”

Oh Christ. I told him that I wasn’t giving it large and really didn’t want a fight. The scary thing was that if we had fought, I’d probably have ended up in casualty over, well, nothing. A trivial misunderstanding.

In the end, thankfully, I was evidentally supine enough for his masculinity to be asserted and, still muttering threateningly, he got into his van and drove off.

I, on the other hand, slunk into my home with revenge fantasies whirling around my head. That’s typical of me. I always feel angry afterwards, never at the time. The thing is, I may pretend to rise above that kind of behaviour, but I’d love to have someone do that to me and know that I could punch his lights out.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mate, totally sympathize - I've done the "let's be reasoanable and calm it down" thing so many times and then fantasized about knifing them Tarantino-style in the face, neck and genitals (sorry, too much information?)... Twice I've actually dared to get irate back and was gratified and bloody lucky that both times the nobheads backed down and executed quick get-aways. And did I feel a pride in my newly exerted masculinity afterwards? Did I fuck. I belatedly realized what a silly twat I'd been. If they'd upped the ante some more I would have been in the shite big time. Either through being hurt or living with the consequences of hurting someone else for the sake of pride.

It comes down to this: fight when you have to; for self defense and protection of your loved ones. Never fight over trivialities. Cos people who do don't tend to live long happy lives... The man in the van is a deeply unhappy arsewipe. Leave him to his fate. Get some enjoyment out of yours...

Steve.

Anonymous said...

I apologise for my Dad's behaviour - the nurse had mixed up his tablets.