Beep Beep, Glare Glare

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious." ~ Brendan Gill (American Author & Preservationist)

This week has been tough for me for a myriad of reasons I won't get into here. Sometimes, I pull through tough times without incident; however, this week, I almost ran over a person and, outside of this, almost caused a major accident.....all in one day.

Shockingly, I am an excellent driver. No accidents, tickets, infractions in years. Insurance is low. No seeming cause for alarm when I hit the road in the morning. My car is sensible. Oh, and I live about 3 minutes from my workplace...so really, how much can go wrong in that little amount of time? There are two people in my city this week who would answer that with, A LOT.

The first person I almost killed was walking in a cross walk, at the appropriate time to be walking through a cross walk - when the hand was solid and white instead of flashing or solid red. I literally did not see her, which apparently makes me blind because she was clearly in plain view. She didn't even look scared to be almost plowed over by my Honda; she looked pissed. And then I got the glare. The "if I glare at you hard enough, you will feel badly about almost running me over" glare. I didn't need the glare, I already felt badly about almost killing her, which I demonstrated by mouthing the words I'm sorry over and over to her through my wind shield.

The second incident, later in the day, took place amidst this fucking construction madness that has been going on for the last 3 months that consumes my entire 3 - 4 minute drive to work - turning it into a 20 minute drive to work, which is clearly unacceptable. It's a catastrophe, this construction, as they keep switching the lanes you can be in (which is 1) so just when you know what you are doing, you become confused again. And none of the provided signage directs you in any meaningful sort of way so people are constantly cutting each off  accidentally. Anyway, there I was, driving along, checking my blind spot constantly - and probably more vigorously than I would have been otherwise due to the incident earlier in the day - and what I should have undeniably seen was some dude driving a black Mazda something or other, quickly approaching on my right side. I saw nothing, despite the fact that I was looking directly at him and his car, which was barreling towards mine because I drove through the confusingly placed yield sign. He had to slam on his breaks, I found myself at the receiving end of that exact same glare, and then immediately afterwards found myself profusely mouthing I'm sorry all over again. I was glad when other cars managed to pull in between us so that I didn't have to suffer the wrath of the glare all the way back to my workplace.