Do I qualify for at least Third Class Curmudgeon status if I opine that I’m getting really tired of “[Fill in the Blank] Rage” being used as a label for everything?
Road Rage. Air Rage. Now Snow Rage.
First of all, the Snow Rage story doesn’t even sound like a classic Rage tale. There’s no sign that the attackers (rarely to Rage tales involve multiple Ragers anyway) were tired, cranky and frustrated. They just beat up a guy who indicated they oughtn’t be doing what they were.
Second, this Rage stuff has always just struck me as yet another way of labeling behavior to get out of being responsible for it. “It wasn’t me, officer. I’m normally a quiet, gentle man. It was circumstances, other rude folks, the rush, the stress, the frenetic pace of modern society. It was the Rage.”
The Devil Made Me Do It.
Feh.
I do not believe that life today is more stressful than twenty, fifty, or a hundred years ago. I think we’re just more creative at coming up with pop psych excuses for folks misbehaving. It couldn’t just be that they have a bad temper, that they lack self-control, that they were just acting-out cranky. It couldn’t be that they thought they could get away with throwing a temper tantrum, or that some people are incredibly self-centered and have no personal sense of restraint or self-control. No, we shake our heads sadly, it must be … the Rage. Blame society. Blame modern life. Blame anyone but the poor, deluded individual.
My mother-in-law almost flunked out of the psych course she took in college because she failed to go along with the then-current party line about child misbehavior all being traceable back to badly timed toilet training. I wonder, though … if we started publicly speculating on the toilet training of Ragers, would that someone remove some of the … well, perhaps not glamor, but certainly Victimization of Modern Society aura that they so proudly bear?
Again, feh.
I’m hoping that the prospect of fellow passengers beating some yahoo senseless with their food trays, just before the pilot stuns said yahoo even senseless with a taser (or a “small axe”), will reduce Air Rage incidents. Too bad Road Rage and (God help us) Snow Rage incidents cannot be so easily dealt with.
I hope they find the snowboarding hooligans (to resurrect another curmudgeonly word) who perpetrated the crime in the article. And I hope, if they actually have the gall to dredge out the term “Snow Rage” in their defense, the judge smiles, says, “Fine. Five-to-ten sitting in the corner, until you can control your tantrums,” and goes on from there.
Rage Rage
Do I qualify for at least Third Class Curmudgeon status if I opine that I’m getting really tired of “[Fill in the Blank] Rage” being used as a label for…
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As someone who, once upon a more stressed out life, experienced road rage on a regular basis… my comments:
Yes. It is up to the individual to control themselves. I did this by keeping all parts of myself inside the car while I yelled myself purple at the people driving me crazy.
I was the one that had *been* in the lane since I got on the expressway, and was damned if I was going to let any G** be D****** M***** F***** cut in from the left because he was traveling, quite speedily, in the lane that had been flagged “construction” for the last 5 miles of road (while the rest of us where at a crawl because the dodgers cutting in stop the traffic…)
I was the one that would edge my car into the lane, partways, just enought so that the SUVs couldn’t squeeze by on the left, to keep them out of that lane. Truckers do this, when the lane in question is one allowed them. I got lots and lots of thumbs up from truckers. What do I drive? An escort station wagon.
Oh, and during all of this I would keep up a running monologue at the top of my voice, screaming and ranting and telling them off.
Yes, I was a nut. Yes, I had one SUV driver that made me swerve away because he was inching and inching and was about to take out my left rear quarter panel. Must have been a company vehicle.
No, I do not have these behavior problems any longer.
One, they FINALLY (three year project) completed the construction/reconstruction of I-696, and two, I quit the job that was an hour away and now work from home.
How do I explain road rage? Too many people on too little road going to jobs that make their stomaches knot up with no hope that tomorrow will be any better than today.
That does not excuse it. I do not excuse myself.
But I caused no accidents and inconvenienced no one that was obeying ‘the rules of the road.’
I think I entertained many…
And I try to be excrutiatingly polite when I am ‘in society’ – this bad behavior was limited strictly to the car, in my case.
Shouting, screaming, and gnashing one’s teeth are not Road Rage, as popularlized by the media. Edging over so that yahoos don’t cut in at the last second, rather than merging in safely (if slowly) is not Road Rage. Road Rage is swerving in front of people at speed, bumping people who won’t get out of the way, and, in case of an accident, running over and bashing in someone’s window with a tire iron.
You just had Road Crankiness. That’s natural and normal and I have it, too. 🙂
oo… well, if you say so.
I am pretty sure it was rage – when the world flashes white and instantly you are ‘battle alert’ and if any of those assholes had actually hit me or my car I am quite certain that I would have had the strength to toss them over the median strip into oncoming traffic…
But, yeah, rage contained – worked through, expressed… without violence…
Not like that awful story out of Boston where the asshole was mad at the lady infront of him for not running the yellow light, so he walked up to her car and threw her _dog_ into oncoming traffic….
I would never do that… mmm. but I could probably throw _him_ out there…