To the very large, bow-tied SUV driver I met at 17th and New York during this morning’s commute,

I’d like to apologize. I yelled at you this morning because you went through that red light, forcing me and 2 pedestrians to actually back up out of the intersection, even though traffic was going a quarter-mile per hour, even though it gained you about 12 feet of forward progress.

As you can tell by the tone, I’m not apologizing because I don’t think it was that big of a deal. It was. I’m apologizing because a better person than I would’ve approached your open window, drawn your attention to what just happened and pointed out (in a positive, constructive way) that it was dangerous and inconsiderate, and ended the conversation in a way that made you feel like you just made a new buddy. I’m working on becoming that better person, but all I could think of at the time was, “What the fuck was that?!”

And you replied angrily, and I responded to that with more swearing, and now both of us will need to eat soap before we can get anywhere near kissing our mother’s cheeks. And since we didn’t connect, you’re angry at me, probably more belligerent to bikes than you were before, and I’m all wound up about you, your SUV, your starched striped shirt and bow-tie, your girth, pretty much everything about ya. I didn’t make the effort that would’ve given either of us a chance to think that the other person wasn’t an asshole.

For that, I apologize, asshole. I’m workin’ on it. Here’s hoping the rest of your day goes better.

Cheers.

Tags: assholes, bicycle commuting, bicycling, Heh, Mr. Crankypants, stupidity, WTF!?!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 9:21 am and is filed under Ride By's. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.