Ticking Stupidity Bomb

I was standing at the lights this morning, at the corner of Gertrude and Brunswick Streets waiting for a tram. It was a beautiful morning, quite busy, there were people crossing at the lights and there was a line of cars, down Gertrude, waiting to turn into Brunswick.

Suddenly, a silver Falcon ute, about five cars down Gertrude Street, started to blow its horn and I could see the fat guy, squeezed into the cabin, remonstrating and yelling, as he continued to toot. The little crossing man, at the lights, had turned red and pedestrians were continuing to cross on the red man.

Goodness me, fat boy, I thought. You'll have a stroke in a minute.

He looked laughable on a gentle, sunny morning. There wasn't even a great line of traffic in which he was having to wait.

Fancy being that pent up angry? How many ticking anger bombs are there in cars, just like him, waiting to explode at the slightest provocation? I felt sorry for him - this is just negotiating the traffic lights, how did he cope with really difficult things in his life?

The saddest aspect to his outburst was that he doesn't even know his road laws. Cars must give way to pedestrians. The little red man is there for the pedestrians information. It is not there for the drivers to be able to tell when they can run pedestrians down with impunity.

I felt sorry for him, as he thrashed his car up to the lights and flung it around the corner still gnashing his teeth, spitting and seething. You could almost see the cab of the ute swollen out with rage, like in a Disney cartoon.

I felt even more sorry for the next person hyper-tension boy meets on the road, who he takes that anger out on; anger that has been caused by his own ignorance, dare I say, his own stupidity.