Friendly Reminder: It is a Small World

...too small for road rage. (This is the "Airport Story" from Thanksgiving)

road rage (noun) uncontrollable aggressive behaviour by the driver of a road vehicle, especially when caused by stress or frustration

Road rage: Babylon English-English n. act of violence committed out of frustration about traffic or driving conditions.

Road rage is the behavior by a driver of an automobile or other motor vehicle, which thus causes collisions or incidents on roadways. It can be thought of as an extreme case of aggressive driving.

So we were heading to the airport and decided to park in long term parking over Thanksgiving. YEA for the holidays starting!! Not being familiar with that lane at ABIA, I got into the far left lane which, as it continued on, turned out to be a shuttle lane. Opps- signaled to the right, started to cross the stripe to get over and ***honk*** WHOA- angry drive to the right. WHOA- he yelled something nasty and flipped us the bird (no, we were not inverted). Unnecessary! Mr. Price and I were shocked, but laughed anyway. Really, dude. So in our shock and hysteria of laughing at... let's call him Mr. Angry, shall we?...Mr. Angry, wouldn't you know- he cut us off! Jumped over into the left lane as he apparently decided to park in long term parking too. HAHA!! Mr. Angry who wasn't okay with a signal and a slow drift into his lane totally cut us off! So we laughed even harder then made faux-angry faces at him a the Quadruple-Flip-Off (which = all 4 hands *briefly* waving at him). Bouncin'' down the road.

Awww... he slowed to get his ticket to go into parking and we wondered if we would get a good look at Mr. Angry. Nope! Though we went into the lane next to him, he hurried on through.

As soon as we get into the parking lot, we notice that not only are many lots already full... there are flaggers every 50 yards or so, waving us on. Uh-oh... we are prolly gonna have to park next to Mr. Angry... as we weaved through the parking lots the flaggers got closer and closer together and sure enough- just like at a concert at The Backyard - we were flagged into a specific parking space **right next to Mr. Angry!!** A little uneasy that he might come out swinging- but we didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter.

Park. Engine off. Mr. Price hops out of the passenger side and with a big grin says "guess we didn't exactly get off on the right foot, huh?" ---Here is where Mr. Angry starts to realize it is a small world and maybe road rage isn't such a good idea--- "Oh, yeah" he mutters, "guess that wasn't exactly the best reaction."

"No worries!!" I beam, "we flipped you off too, when you cut us off a few moments later" and shrugged my shoulders.

Continuing to get our luggage out of the trunk, he had gathered his and was about to walk off when he stammered, "I guess I should have known you guys were going to get over. That shuttle lane it tricky and I've done the same thing before. " We double-"don't worry/no problem-ed" him and he walked off.

This could have been the end. Oh no, not done yet.

Another shuttle pulled up but one of the flaggers yelled to us "We've got more space on this one! You two can get on here..." Of course. So on the shuttle we go with our new friend, Mr. Angry.

Loaded up and headed to the terminal: still having a grand 'ol time and thrilled for a quick holiday, Mr. Price and I are laughing on the shuttle and have all but forgotten Mr. Angry when half way to the terminal.... Mr. Angry slides over into the seat next to us.

Got to give him full props. Maybe he should be called Mr. Not-So-Angry at this point. We received a heartfelt, tail-between-legs apology and something about how "it's easy to forget that it's real people in the car as you drive down the road." He really shouldn't have behaved that way and was embarrassed, etc, etc. Bless his heart. We accepted his apology, told him it was okay and not to worry about it, then to have a great holiday.

Smooth cruise through the airport and 30 minutes later, we're seated and ready to go. Sure enough... who walks onto the plane but: Mr. Angry! He apparently saw us first because by the time we saw him and smiled, he was already ready with "yes, I figured you would be on my flight. It's a small world..." as he was turning red.

I replied with a quick, "sometimes you can make friends in the most unlikely of fashions!"

Good times.

Lesson learned.