With apologies to my US blogging friends

I’ll be perfectly candid, until such time as I started this blog and for some years, I held a pretty dim view of US citizens and all things USA. Yes, of course, to take such a view is to generalise and we all know generalisations aren’t generally fair. My view was fostered and supported by several factors of which all thinking people are well aware. However, since starting this blog I’ve “met” some really great people from the US, whom I’ve been delighted to get to know and who restored my increasingly flagging opinions of all things US. Today, however, my view has taken another serious nosedive and while I realise this may be unfair, it strikes me that what I experienced today is the kind of behaviour that has given the US the increasingly pariah international reputation it has wittingly created.

Aside from the fact that crime and violence have increased (as they do every year at this time) along with the arrival of the stressfully silly season, and the governing party are at each others throats at their annual conference where the fate of the nation will be decided, and the markets are wobbly and people are generally feeling twitchy, I was feeling fairly chilled and was tootling along the motorway – mostly courtesy of the fact that it’s a holiday here today and I’ve got all my Christmas shopping done. The motorway, I should point out, isn’t really a motorway or a freeway, but a two lane road the travels from the outskirts of suburbia to the city.

I had just overtaken another car so was in the “fast”/right lane when a fellow in a blue SUV roared up behind me. Since I was too close to the other car to cross back to the “slow”/left lane, I stayed where I was. The fellow edged towards my exhaust and then, in a fit of impatience, swerved out from behind me, cutting in front of the other car, roared off, cut back in front of me and chased off down the road - only to find himself having to stop abruptly at a red light at an intersection. I chuckled, as I often do when people display such idiotic behaviour. They seem to be in this terrible haste but fail to account for the fact that that particular section of road is littered with traffic lights and progress is invariably slow as a result.

I pulled up behind him. He glowered at me in his rear view mirror and proceeded to indicate with a circular movement of his finger to his head that he thought I was crazed. So I do what I frequently do with stroppy drivers; I shook my head and gave him the finger. He flung his door open and bellowed, “Don’t you fucking give me the finger.” Needless to say I did what any self-respecting woman who doesn’t take shit from oafs would do – I gave him the finger again. He leapt from his vehicle – ignoring the fact that the lights were changing, and rushed over to my car. He was, I noticed, sporting a straw cowboy style hat and had a beer gut that drooped unattractively over the top of his shorts. He waved his hands at me and screamed in an unmistakable US accent, “Don’t you give me the fucking finger you fucking whore!”

Nice man. Not.

I locked my car door and tried to figure how best to get away from the deranged clod. I might be cheeky but I am not suicidal. Traffic was streaming past us and was backed up behind me. People were hooting and I suppose in one way it was a good thing it was a holiday and traffic was light. Mind you, on the other hand, had it been busier perhaps someone might have leapt from a car and belted him, deservedly, on the snout.

As the bulk of the traffic passed and as he leapt back into his gas guzzler, I started to manoeuvre past him. But what did he do as I drew level with his rear passenger door? He swung hard and cut me off – deliberately trying to force an accident. The word “fuckwit” sprung to mind. Fortunately, having figured that he was sufficiently doltish and demented to do what he did, I braked and swung back into the right lane. He swung back in front of me and roared forward. Needless to say I was, by that stage, somewhat incensed. All mantras, notions of peace, love, brown bread and interconnectedness had flown from my being. He swung to the left lane and I accelerated, only to find that he did so too and swerved again to cut me off and then blocked my passing him by driving on the white line. Such etiquette. Such style. Such exemplary behaviour. Very definitely not. Of course, he not only blocked me, he blocked every other motorist on the road. So I slowed down and loitered and he, his fury no doubt boiling over, roared forward and I managed to tuck myself away three cars behind him.

Now here’s the thing: it is this sort of arrogant, aggressive, boorish behaviour that gives the US such a bad name. This guy is not a local and god knows, despite the fact that there is some seriously aggressive driving on local roads, I have never encountered anything like that here, not ever. People just don’t bother to get quite that offended, despite the levels of stress with which we all live. They may hoot, they may drive up your backside, they will inevitably give you the bird, but I have never seen anyone do what this US fellow did. And it struck me that he dealt a blow to that generalised view that has increasingly made the US a nation so despised and destested by so many of the world’s people. Diplomatic relations, let it be said, took a serious plummet today.

And this is the funny thing about us humans, isn’t it – we tend to notice and focus on the bad people do, rather than the good. We tend to remember the insensitivity and the arrogance, the bullying and the brashness, the ignorance and the aggression. We look at the Bush administration and shake our heads and say, “Yeah, well, no wonder, what do you expect.” Oh well, no doubt the bloke’s own karma will get him and he probably took himself a few years closer to a heart attack. And so much for my quiet tootle to the mall and my carefully cultivated equilibrium.