Don’t be an A**hole

One lazy Sunday morning, I was driving to the East Potomac Golf course in Washington D.C., looking forward to a relaxing day playing golf with my brothers. I was semi-content, my thoughts at ease, when I came upon a bicyclist riding in the middle of the road. There are lots of bicyclists in that particular area because the golf course is surrounded by a popular park. Needless to say, bicyclists tend to get in the way of cars, pedaling along as if the road is theirs, which technically, by the laws of speed and gross weight-age, it really isn’t. Regardless of petty annoyance, I have nothing against bike riders.

So I’m driving along behind this guy, who is peddling about 5 mph, just baiting my time. At one point I see that there is enough room for me to pass. Out of courtesy, I honked my horn just to let the bicyclist know I was on his left side passing. Apparently, I committed a mortal sin in the bike rider’s handbook of “Do’s and Don’ts”. To my puzzlement, the bike rider peddles as fast he can, and passes me like Lance Armstrong at the Tour de France.

As I am turning into the club parking lot, the bike rider whips his bike around in the middle of the road and gets off his bike – forcing me to stop my car. Now at that point, I am more baffled than scared, so I roll down my window to see what the guy’s problem is.

Here is how the dialogue between us went:

Biker (approaching me on the driver’s side): “You honked your horn! You never honk your horn! You scared the shit out of me!”

Me (calm): “I was just being courteous, man. I was letting you know I was passing.”

Bicyclist (still yelling): “You don’t do that! You don’t honk your horn!”

Me (spider senses tingling, warning me of danger): “Don’t lecture me. I was just being nice, trying to let you know I was there.”

Biker: “Yeah, well if that is your way of being nice, then next time just kick me in the nuts!”

Me (having realized I am in the presence of absurdity): “Okay! Next time I’ll kick you in the nuts!”

Biker (loses it): “I’ll f****ing kill you!”

Me (knee-jerk reaction): “F*** you!”

This confrontation actually happened verbatim. He then peddled off at that point leaving me to shake my head in disbelief at the gall of someone, to be so pathetically confrontational over nothing; let alone threaten me with death. Maybe I could have handled the situation a little different and refrained from sarcasm. However, when out of the blue, you are confronted with aggression, it’s hard to know what you are potentially facing. I’m not a brave person per se, I don’t care for conflict, but on that day, I was proud of myself for keeping my cool. 

I’ve pondered since then, what if the situation had escalated to a point where I got my ass kicked, over nothing? Or what if I grabbed a golf club to defend myself, and accidentally landed a nine-iron shot that took the guy out, only to spend the next 20 years in jail for 2nd degree manslaughter. Over what? Over nothing!

My point is, the world is a strange and dangerous place where you always have to be on-guard – always, even when going out to golf. It must be ten times worse for women, when adding the burden of the male libido into the equation. So, I request an A.F.D – Asshole Free Day, to be authorized by Congress and signed off by the President every June; my B-day month of course.

The truth is, shit like what went down that Sunday, is never going to end in our lifetime. No matter how gentle you wish to be, no matter how much you try to alleviate confrontation, “asshole” is a genetic disposition that wrecks havoc around the world – and it’s just one more thing God needs to fix in His creation.

So many times, we find ourselves dragged into conflict because of someone else’s power trip, wishing to will upon others their sense of “superiority”, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it except, take it, or fight back. Attempting to reason with the unreasonable just doesn’t add up. I may overuse the word asshole, or maybe I don’t use it enough, but the point is your day can go from okay, to screwed up pretty quickly because some jerk wants to force their will upon you.

You cannot escape the lunacy of life. You almost have to be crazy yourself in effort to counter the insanity around you; which at any moment can show up, and like Jack Nicholson in the movie “The Shining”, poke its head into the bashed-in bathroom door of reason, madly stating, “Here’s Johnny!” 

  “The Shining” / Warner Bros

So, the question I try to answer in this website is twofold; how do we, as a human race, rationalize a gentle loving God, when man is anything but? How do you exist in the world as a rational, nice human, with so much competition and conflict, both internal and external? For all the great that life is, and for all the great that man and woman have done, the fact is, the world is a strange place, that seems to be getting stranger by the day! (See Twitter).

Humans, out of necessity, are driven by greed. To put it in a slightly less polite way; there are just way too many assholes in the world. So do the world a favor… don’t be an asshole!

This message was brought to you by Assholes Anonymous – not to be confused with Alcoholics Anonymous (although the two potentially go hand-in-hand).*

Written by: T.K.

Chief Editor: Jade L.

*Picture Credit – MeMe

Share This Article