When OCD and Road Rage Collide

We've all—for the purposes of this here blog entry, anyway—heard this cliché: "Two wrongs don't make a right." Yes, yes, very (sanctimoniously) lovely.

Many of us—at least the smarmily sarcastic ones in the group—have even used this in rebuttal: "But three lefts DO make a right!" (I'll give you a minute while you draw that one out. Oh, you got it right away? Umm. Yeah, so did I.)

Anyway, what I discovered the other day wasn't so much about wrongs or lefts but because the fact that two of my more undesirable traits did seem to cancel each other out, I still made the connection. And so here we are, three (short) paragraphs in and still lost in the Country of Vague. Oops.

Although it has never been "officially" proclaimed, I think it quite obvious that I'm a wee tad bit obsessive/compulsive. Even if you only examine the particular routine I maintained for, oh, about seven YEARS, wherein before leaving the house, I had to—HAD. TO.—locate each household cat and snorgle the beast, dropping precisely two (2) nose-tickling kisses atop her head EVERY TIME I LEFT THE HOUSE, well, yeah. Pass me the OCD crown, for surely I have earned the right to be photographed in it.

Likewise, I have done a neat job of establishing the blossoming case of flaming road rage that I've been nurturing for years, although moreso now that I have to drive all the way to Corporate. Apparently, that's the route most of the Road Rage-Inducers like to take, too.

So. During a recent snowstorm—and we have had way damn too many of these white-screeching, wind-ripping, road-coating nastinesses this year BY FAR, and the record books are totally backing me up, so there—I was making my bitter way home, as per usual. I wasn't doing so well with the creative cursing either, although rather than drop into the deep pits of "FUCK! FUCK! FUCKITY FUCK FUCK FUCK!" I was hanging out in the somewhat reasonable realm of "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOUR PARENTS! AND I REALLY HATE YOUR DRIVER'S ED INSTRUCTOR!"

What? At least I've been occasionally refraining from the F-bomb! This blog-entry notwithstanding. But back to our story, already in progress.

While I was surrounded by drivers for whom I'd already vulgarly expressed my loathing, I noticed a car making its way up the line of traffic. Remember, it was snowing. The road was coated in snow, the cars were churning up snow with their tires, snow was blowing sideways and swirling and churning, AND there was MORE freaking snow coming down. In short, this was not the time to play Indy-500, and yet, here was Joe Teenager (I'm guessing; I didn't get a look at the driver and I will explain that in a moment), doing just that.

When he swerved around me—getting too close for even perfect-weather driving—I was within a quarter mile of the next turnoff. Knowing, as I did, the habits of local drivers, I realized that he was about to perform the immensely offensive Pass One More Car Before The Turnoff maneuver, and I felt a surge of rage that truly surpassed all previous road-ragings: I actually lost vision in my right eye for a split second. Which is, of course, not what you want to be doing in heavy traffic during a snowstorm.

When Joe Teenager not only did just as I expected, but HAD TO BRAKE TO DO IT, I lost my freaking little mind. And I screamed (something like):

"AAAAAUUUGMLTDFLTZ! AAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Now. Much as I was grateful for the fact that I did have my vision back after that momentary—though very real—half-way blackout, in my head, I was still Going Off. Because vocal clarity was still absent, I was mentally screaming at Joe Teenager all the way until he turned off, lecturing him on the sheer—no control-top or reinforced toes WHATSOEVER—stupidity of his "driving," the fact that BY GOLLY IF YOU HAVE TO BRAKE TO GET AHEAD OF SOMEONE YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS BEING AHEAD OF THEM, and oh yes, YOU'RE TURNING THE FRICK OFF SO WHY THE BLANKITY-BLANK DO YOU NEED TO PASS ANYONE?

In short, I was wondering how stupid you have to be to do something like this, and because it was an interesting question, I quickly diverted to answering it. My chain of "reasoning" went something like this:

You have to be really stupid. Well, duh, you have to be stupider than THAT. How stupid? This is an exercise in quantification.

You have to be as dumb as a squirrel. True, but trite. What else have you got?

Your brain has to be about as big as a squirrel's left nut. Oh, come on, think about that. The left nut is bigger than the right, isn't it? Care to rephrase? Right. Yes! Rephrase, AS IF YOU HAVEN'T BEEN DOING THAT ALL ALONG.

You have to be so stupid that if a squirrel's right nut was surgically removed, your brain would not even fill up the void left in his nutsack. Aha! Now we're getting somewhere!

You have to be so stupid that if a squirrel's right nut was surgically removed and your brain was transplanted into its place, there would be so much room left in the nutsack ... Wait a minute. No, really! I'm serious! HEY! ALL ENGINES STOP.

Is "nutsack" singular or plural? I mean, is it all ONE encasing, or is there, like, a divider thingie? Like in a purse with two pockets, you know, and ...

Yeah. I was all calmed down and non-violent by the time I came to the next exit—just a mile or two down the road. Because I got all distracted by the question of whether a nutsack was, technically, a single entity. Because I NEEDED my insult—which only I could hear, Joe Teenager being long gone and OH YES, IN ANOTHER VEHICLE—to be ACCURATE. Precise, yes, I was pretty well there, but by golly, that was NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Anyway. To make a long story short(er)—though not by much, I imagine—I ended up deciding that my OCD was a wonderful counterbalance to my road-rage, and I would be better served by employing THAT, rather than creative cursing, to calm my angst and, oh yes, hopefully prevent another split-second blackout. Which, let's be perfectly blunt, is way damn more dangerous than the stupidity of others.

I must confess, though, that the image of the squirrel pondering just what the hell is going on with his right nut is a surprisingly reassuring one. (Your mileage may vary.)