Thursday, March 6, 2008

vAnnie, Thou Art Loosed: Part the Second

To recap, I am now out of my vehicle at a four-way stop in rush hour traffic stalking toward a vehicle easily twice the size of mine, looking for all the world like a woman gone mad.

I unfurled a stream of vicious profanity as my feet hit the asphalt, I said things that would make my mother question her effectiveness in raising me and my continued suitability as her daughter.

But before I get to her car, the woman takes off. This should be the end of things, right? Right?

No. I cannot leave well enough alone and I get back in my car and drive after the woman.

It should be said that I've been overcome with such a singular sense of rage at this point that I am no longer thinking about what I'm doing.

I follow this woman into a neighborhood subdivision. It was not a high speed, back alley sort of a chase but rather a sedate 20 mph tour up, over, around, and through a neighborhood. I get the feeling that this woman is probably beginning to regret interacting with me.

I follow behind her for about 10 minutes before I regain my sense of decency and call my confessor, my brother. I dial his number and I tell him that I'm in the middle of doing something really, really stupid and that I really, really don't need him to yell at me about it.

In true sibling fashion, my brother will never allow any opportunity to criticize me slip away so it is a testament to his maturity (or my level of bat shit crazy at the moment) that he calmly asked me if I would rather be on my way home or continue my low speed pursuit of a stranger through the greater-Houston suburbs.

I abandoned the chase and headed home. But not without replaying the events in my mind. I am susceptible to occasional bouts of piss-poor behavior, but man - this was a doozy. Did my blinding rage stem from having what is essentially a desk job, or from living in the all-too-quiet suburbs for a few years, or is it the recent rediscovery of industrial music when working out? Or is it, as I suspect, a complete systemic rebellion over me trying to take up Yoga. Maybe I just wasn't built to be that serene.

Now you see why I ride the van in the first place. Mixing with other drivers on the highways and byways of Houston's mean streets is obviously more than I can manage without resorting to homicidal mania.

But I'll bet that woman never tries a stunt like that again in her life.


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