Yesterday, I pulled up at a red light on Willy Street where it crossed the Yahara river. This light usually changes only when the people using the bicycle path press the button because they want to cross the street. There also happens to be a side road that connects to Willy Street there. When the light changed, a car waiting on that side road started to pull out when he got the green light. The driver had to wait for the people crossing, of course, but he did what many drivers do: he kept slowly creeping forward as if somehow that would get him to his destination sooner than if he just chilled the fuck out and waited for his turn.

The pedestrians didn’t even pretend they were trying to get out of the way. People who live along Willy street, as well as people who use the bike path to get across town, are not well disposed to yield to drivers. They continued strolling ever so casually across the road no matter how close he got to them. The driver didn’t give any sign that he was all that impatient to go, or was getting mad, other than that he seemed to be willing to let his car run over anyone in the crosswalk who didn’t get out of his way. But besides that he was very accommodating, as long as he could keep moving.

The last person crossing the street was a guy in a wheelchair. He had no use of his arms or legs; it was one of those wheelchairs that he controlled by blowing into a tube. The driver appeared to be utterly indifferent to this guy’s circumstances, creeping closer and closer until his fender was all but pushing the wheelchair out of his way, and by the time he got that close, the guy in the wheelchair was nearly all the way across and had to pause a moment to line the chair’s direction of travel up with the ramp built into the curb, forcing the driver to tap his brakes. The driver, finally displaying a flash of impatience, cranked his wheel around to steer into the oncoming lane, gunned the engine and sped off.

I can watch this kind of vehicular drama for only so long before my inner monologue spews from my mouth, emerging full-blown as a rant of the nth degree. B used to be alarmed by these outbursts; now, she accepts them as part of my coping mechanism. This one she even enjoyed: “Would it have fucking killed him to wait another ten seconds, or maybe even as much as twenty, for the guy in the fucking wheelchair to finish crossing the road? Would it have fucking ruined his day to wait until the next green light? What the fuck is wrong with people?” And so on, becoming more incoherent the longer I ranted, until eventually I had to stop because it was just babble and spit.