A man break checked me this morning. Too bad he didn’t get rear ended. As I drove around his vehicle he started yelling profanities out of his window and suddenly I felt my mother in me.

My mother was known for jumping over the hood of a car to attack a man during a road rage incident in her youth. I watched her get in the face of a group of heavily tattooed people, tear drops on their face, in a parking lot over a spot. My brother once referred to her as an abused pit bull backed into a corner. I’ve had similar things said about me.

As I grabbed my blade and opened it, ready to get out of my car and humble him I realized, this is the uglier side of my human nature. It’s in my blood to be aggressive when provoked. I told a woman last February to come to me with what she had in her safe, she didn’t realize how serious I was about the rush I would have felt having metal waved in my face, it wouldn’t have been my first time either.

I knew in the moment that with him being a man my chances of winning the fight were slim, I didn’t care. He wasn’t going to leave unscathed. As I stopped next to him having his tirade I stared at him and waited for him to make the first move, he drove off instead.

He decided for me that today I’d stay out of jail. Maybe I should thank him.