Road rage truly brings out the worst in us. All it takes is a Buick to cut me off during rush hour for me to rethink my position on social security.
I learned this lesson in ninth grade, when my older sister Katie would vent her stress at slow and indecisive drivers on the way to school in her Chevy Trailblazer.
We were already five minutes late to her volleyball game one day when a Dodge Caravan pulled in front of us to exit a parking lot.
I instinctively sunk low in the passenger seat, like a dog anticipating a rolled newspaper.
After a two-minute, curse-filled rant about soccer moms, the Caravan's white reverse lights glowed, and the vehicle rolled back toward us. To my sister, this meant war.
The driver's door swung open and a middle-aged black woman approached our car.
"I'm out of gas," the woman calmly explained, "And I couldn't get it over the hill to pull into the street. I need to back it up to roll it into that gas station."
Katie ignored the politeness and stuck to her guns.
"How am I supposed to reverse?" she barked, pointing to the long line of cars behind us.
But the woman, channeling Moses, waved her hand, and the cars miraculously receded in unison.
My sister reversed and turned toward another exit.
"There you go," the woman said encouragingly. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"
Big mistake. She may have had blue and gold spirit ribbons in her hair, but Katie was no child.
She jerked the car back into drive and huffed, "God, what a bitch!"
The woman's smile vacated her face like a bystander in one of those old Western shoot-outs.
"Excuse me?" she asked coldly.
My sister slammed on the accelerator, the 'Blazers' tires screeching as we peeled out across the parking lot. Katie stuck her head out the window, her spirit ribbons flickering in the wind like flames.
"Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!"
Katie turned back, breathing heavily, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
"Katie, you're racist," I gasped from underneath the glove compartment.
"I'm not racist. I'm not racist!"
Katie isn't - and wasn't - racist. Road rage simply unleashes a beast inside all of us.
Occasionally as I drive to work I'll catch myself repeating terms I discovered as graffiti on public bathroom stalls.
The truth is, a driver's license doesn't merely allow us to drive - it's a license to hate.
