I Have Done Things I Am Not Proud of

The light changed, his horn blew.  That quickly.  The unwelcome blare startled and instantly angered me.  I pressed on the gas pedal and proceeded through the green light as the SUV swerved, then accelerated around me.  The driver, locking eyes with me, gave his best glare.  A 20-something, perhaps early 30s, he contorted his face into what I suspect he hoped was a fearsome snarl.

I gave him the finger.

Without hesitation he swerved in front of me, nearly clipping the front of my old jalopy.  I couldn't help but notice the "VETERAN" plates on his car as he slammed his brakes.  What had been nothing more than a brief annoyance somewhere in my chest had become a familiar fierceness in my brain.  He began to pull away but quickly responded to my encouraging gestures he pulled to the side of the road.

Before his door was all the way open I was out of my car and bearing down on him like a raging bull.  Though I feel younger (at least mentally), the gray in my beard and lines on my face betray me. Regardless, six feet three inches and well over two hundred pounds of fury made the young road-rager's eyes go big.  He knew he was about to be tuned up.

I shouted "What kind of Vet are you?!" just as my hand closed around his neck and I drove him halfway over the "V" created by his open car door and the side of his windshield.

Then I heard it.  Cutting though the boiling of my brain I heard it.  Crying.  From the back seat of this moron's car came the sound of at least two children weeping.  My heart sank.  I eased up on the driver's neck and he cautiously allowed himself to stand upright again.

"What are you thinking," I asked... incredulous beyond measure someone would come so close to causing an accident with children in his car!

"I'm sorry, man," he said... offering me his hand.  "I was wrong.  I was out of line."

It took a few seconds for me to accept his offer - my brain shifting gears and trying to wrap meaning around what I'd experienced, my anger, his children crying, and now this.

I shook his hand and returned to my car, his children's frightened wails haunting my chest-full of lifelong poor decisions.

Driving away, I wished I had taken a moment to address his children... to say I was sorry, that adults don't always handle things in an appropriate way.

Lost.