I love...polite road rage.

My drive home from work today was...frustrating. I started on my usual route, but some roads were closed and every turn I took turned out to be the wrong turn. And with every wrong turn there was traffic, traffic and more traffic.

Several years ago this would have been no problem. I used to be the person letting everyone merge, letting everyone turn and patiently waiting as the person in front of me scooted down the road at 5MPH.

But that all changed and somewhere along the line I developed a small case of road rage.


To be clear, I don't have the chasing people down the highway, running them off the road type of road rage. Mine is more of a "polite" road rage.




For example, I often catch myself yelling things like:

• "Share the road, please!" (when someone isn't letting me merge on the highway)
• "I'm not going to send you an invitation!" (when the person in the lane next to me with their blinker on isn't moving over as quickly as I would like)
• "Oh please, after you!" (sarcastically - when someone cuts me off)

Then there was the time I was driving my sister Lisa to Columbus to see our family. There we were on I-71 South, nice weather, no traffic, and the guy in the car behind me could not have been any closer to my car's bumper unless he was sitting on it. I watched him in my rear view, then looked away and chatted with Lisa. I looked again, he was still there. I was in the middle lane, the lanes on either side of me were wide open, what was he doing? Still, I remained calm. Lisa and I chatted about something that she then began to look up on Facebook. I looked again...he was still there! That's when I couldn't take anymore and I yelled: "What do you want, sir?!" Though the tone of my voice made Lisa look as though she wanted to jump out the car window, it was what I actually yelled that made us laugh till we cried. That went on for about five minutes, and somewhere in that time the guy behind me realized there was more than one lane on the highway and he passed me.

As for today's traffic situation, I managed to make it home while only dropping a few "P "& "S" words ("please" & "sir").

So the next time you're driving with me in traffic get ready to tip your hat or curtsy your butt off, because being frustrated doesn't mean you can't still be polite.