The other people

On Monday a disturbing thing happened to me on my home from work. I haven't really told anyone and don't quite know how to categorize it, but it hasn't left me so it's difficult to just shrug it off.
I stopped by the groceries store on my home and upon leaving I had to cross a 3 way stop intersection, I waited for a man who had right of way. He could not move because a lady in a large land rover was happily dreaming away halfway into the intersection. So he indicated I should go which I the did. What I did not pay attention to was the young man in the car behind me. The minute I pulled away he started hooting profusely signalling the most vivid private and personal profanities at me. He screeched past me continuing his sign language. I still don't know what I did to provoke him. Perhaps I took too long being courteous to the other drivers, I really don't know.

However, the ill mannered, substandardly educated young man-person was not my concern. The battered looking young lady sitting in the passenger seat being forced to witness this display of primal revenge stuck in my head. She looked beaten, lifeless, unaffected. Her reaction indicated that the behavior was neither new, unfamiliar or entirely unacceptable. 

It shocked me. I don't know why. I mean it's not like I live in a bubble. I live in South Africa's crime capital. I have seen and read the worst of human behavior. I guess it just reminded me that bad things, evil if you will and bad people are still there. There are still people acting out in pain and anger in ways less proper. There are still young girls falling for men of this nature setting themselves and their unfortunate children up for years of distress, abuse, emptiness, disappointment, lies and hardship.

Or...maybe the fucker just had a really bad day.