Most of the time I don’t write about unpleasant things here. But something happened just now that left me shaking so badly that I had to pull into a parking lot and write it down. <\/p>\n
I was driving in Lincoln Park, relying on google maps to get me to my destination (which was a bit confusing from where I was). A guy driving a very expensive little vintage sports car was driving quite fast behind me, and there were a lot of cars on the road. So I was being careful and going slower than I normally do (maybe 20 mph?) He started honking at me and flicking me off. At that moment, someone tried to back out in front of me, so I hit my brakes. He was trying to go around me so he ended up stuck behind me still. <\/p>\n
When we stopped at the light he got out of his car and came over to my open window yelling. “You f*****g c***, what the f*** is wrong with you?” And he kept repeating that and gesturing like he wanted to reach into my partially open window and strangle me. I told him that I was going to call the cops and he said that I should. I rolled up my window and he went back to his car. <\/p>\n
The light changed and I turned onto another street. I saw that he followed me for about a block and then turned and disappeared. <\/p>\n
I was terrified he might have a gun. I was terrified that he would do something on a crowded street, even with a dozen people watching. He was older, bigger, and more intimidating, and he was a man. I don’t intimidate easily, but I also live in a gun-crazy country, in a city that is passing a law allowing concealed carry. I can handle a lot, and could have driven away, except there are some things you can’t outrun. <\/p>\n
Where does a person learn to explode in such hateful violence against people they don’t know? What makes a man say such things to someone? I can’t remember the last time someone called me those things, but it was so shocking I didn’t even know how to respond. If he had come up to my window and been pleasant, or asked if I needed help finding something, we could have had a pleasant interaction. <\/p>\n
His assumption that he was allowed to speak to me in that manner was unacceptable, but I could do nothing about it. And there is nothing unique in the experience I just had. A lot worse happens every day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Most of the time I don’t write about unpleasant things here. But something happened just now that left me shaking so badly that I had to pull into a parking lot and write it down. I was driving in Lincoln…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2998"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3000,"href":"http:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2998\/revisions\/3000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sholeh.calmstorm.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}