January 19: Two Babes and the Bird

Today's new experience comes to us from what I can best identify as a middle-aged woman and her son, whom I peg between the ages of 11 an 14, who delivered the experience to me firsthand: literally! I'll get to that in a minute, but let's start from the beginning. I had just I picked up my son from daycare and proceeded to exit the facility upon which the daycare resides. Something you should know about said facility is that it exits at a 4-way stop, with a traffic light, out to a main road that is hopping around the time this incident occurred. My goal here was to turn right on to the aforementioned road, and as I came to a stop at the red light, the oncoming traffic was quite lengthy so I knew I would have to wait for green before turning. While waiting, I took the opportunity to turn and look at my son who eagerly wanted to show me how to form the letter "N" using sign language; which, of course, he had just learned in school. However, I took a quick peek at the light, which was still red, before turning. I couldn't have been but 2-3 seconds looking at my son and his letter "N" (which he does quite well, by the way) when I returned to facing the light, which was now green. As I began my right turn, an SUV coming left from straight across the intersection basically cut me off. Enter Mom and Son, who apparently felt that I should have slammed on the gas and peeled out around the corner the very millisecond the light changed to green. Truth be told, their random act of impatience wasn't extremely close to clipping us, and at no point were my son and I in danger as a result, but it still gets under your skin a bit, at least mine, when someone can't wait a matter of seconds because they obviously have a life-changing event to get to in a short amount of time; or at least something more important than me getting my son home safely. Anyway, just to inform them that I wasn't pleased about their lack of discipline, I gave 'em a brief honk. And, that's about the time I experienced a first in my life. Almost in slow motion, my honk created this reaction: Mom turned sideways in order to raise her hands and, what I assume, scream some form of obscenity at me, while her son - get this as this is the big bomb - gives me some sign language of his own - "the bird", if you will! Now, I've been yelled at by other drivers, but I can't say I've ever been the recipient of the middle finger by an adolescent/young teen who was with his Mother! I mean, she had to have seen him as she was looking out that very same window he used to send me his message. Mom sped off afterwards and quickly turned at the next light, so I was not able to continue this conversation to get her take on the actions of her son. But, I would have loved to find out if he was self-taught or if the finger was part of Mom's lesson plan. Regardless, I tried something new, though it wasn't by choice, and I was able to teach my son a lesson of my own: there are all kinds of idiots in this world and the best thing you can do is just ignore them and chuckle when their world collides with yours.