Driving to work is usually, thankfully, a non-event. It's a necessity, because there's no way I could struggle home on the bus with three sets of exercise books begging to be marked; a fact I'd love to point out to every environmentalist who glares at my car of just one occupant. Not that I've ever noticed environmentalists glare, just rain-sodden hitch-hikers who wouldn't understand my need for half an hour of solitude, loud music and bad singing to blot out the day's events.
Sometimes, though, something does happen on my drive in. Something that stirs the primeval
anger known as road rage. It's those mornings that the first child I see bouncing a football
in the corridor, running off with someone else's bag, or fiddling with light switches, will
be the recipient of a vitriolic verbal blast. Yes, I do feel guilty afterwards. But they
did know the risk when they broke the rules.
One morning, though, a road rage incident left me unusually subdued. With only two minutes before the morning meeting, I really didn't need any hold-ups. So picture my frustration when a father in his de rigeur 4x4 decided to pull across the road in front of me to illegally park on the yellow zig-zag lines outside the school. These lines have been painted there to prevent kids like his chauffeured little precious getting knocked over by fuck-off monster trucks like his. It was this frustration at the moron that made me throw my hands up in incomprehension after I was forced to brake, and then I shouted something rude and most probably highly insulting, as you do when you're in your metal box and nobody else can hear you. Unfortunately, it seemed that moronic father had interpreted my intended message only too well, and now that his monster truck was blocking my escape, he decided he was going to get out and sort me out.
I felt like shouting, "But I'm a teacher!" as a valid excuse, but in retrospect he would
probably have hit me even harder then. However, it must have been my day for lucky
endings, as for some reason he climbed back into the moron-mobile, like he realised that
being out of his vehicle would involve something called walking, or that it was an
experience akin to being wrenched from the womb. It could also have been the oncoming school
bus hurtling straight for his moron-mobile now that the bus passengers had been forced off
to stream through the school gates, but whatever it was, it saved me from (a) having a
slanging match / fisticuffs in the street with a scary idiot in front of the last few stragglers
dragging their heels to school, and (b) being late for the staff meeting, which is probably
worse.
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