Wonderland - Two thumbs up!

Sorry I “nerded out” yesterday. I just had to get some things out of my head.

So here is my question for today. Are people for the most part good, or inherently evil? This is something that has actually been on my mind for about a week and my opinion keeps changing. The other day I tried to take the perspective that people aren’t rude intentionally, they just don’t realize they are being rude. That only lasted about 3 hours.

Last week, I had just left home and I was driving to work. It was 6:00 AM and I was driving down a two-lane road. There was a full-size truck in front of me (one lane over), and a compact car about 100 feet behind me (one lane over). We are the only 3 cars on this road for as far as the eye can see and we were all going the same speed. My lane was ending, so I put on my blinker to get over. The compact car speeds up so I can’t quite get over. The lane I’m in doesn’t end gradually. There is a metal guardrail at a 90-degree angle at the end. So I start to get over very slowly hoping the young girl driving will realize I don’t have a choice but to get over. She speeds up again and is 2 feet in off the bumper of the full-size truck. I had to slam on my brakes and come to a complete stop so I wouldn’t crash. Why would someone do that? She wasn’t driving fast until I put on my blinker and she didn’t drive fast afterwards when the road widened to two lanes again.

So I did what any calm and mature driver would do. I turned on my brights, tailgated her, and honked my horn for 30-second intervals while I followed her for a couple of miles. Okay. I know I over-reacted, but that’s what I’m talking about. There was no reason for her to do that other than to be rude. Other examples from this week:

• A lady driving on the shoulder of the road because she didn’t want to sit in traffic.
• Someone grabbed a piece of paper out of my hand while I was reading it.
• Mike not updating his blog for a week at a time.
• I won the football pool at work this week. When the organizer paid me, he shorted me $10, because he thought I didn’t know about the extra two people that put their money in at the last minute.

Intentional things like this bother me the most. I feel that I am a good person and wouldn’t intentionally hurt someone. I go overboard sometimes about teasing someone when I am trying to be funny, but I feel terrible if I am called on it. My emotions feed heavily off of others so when someone does something rude or inconsiderate, it really affects me. On the other hand I see so many people doing intentionally rude things and it doesn’t seem to bother them at all.