Anger and guilt

I lost my cool at a traffic light today. A guy on a motorcycle pulled into the narrow gap between my new car and the car in the next lane. As I sat there getting nervous about the small gap between his handle bars and my door, the inevitable happened; he lost his balance and his handle bar dinged against my car leaving a micro-dent. I got out of the car, looked at the new dent and stared at him.

Instead of apologizing, which should have been the end of it, really; he smiled and said, "It is only a small dent." That is when I lost it.

I yanked his keys out of his ignition and told him to collect them from the nearest police station. I got back into my car, and as he sat there just staring at me, I rolled down the window and told him to ensure that he carried all his paperwork for the bike when he visited the police station as they would want to check every thing.

At this point he started to get apologetic, but did not, could not, apologize. With a couple of seconds to go on the traffic light timer, I tossed his keys out the window. He tried to catch them, but I had tossed them to fly past; just beyond his reach. I watched him in the rear-view mirror as I drove off, trying to bend over and pick up the keys.

I am not proud of my behaviour today; and I have been feeling guilty all afternoon. If I should chance upon him again, I would most likely apologize.

Epiphany for the day: Guilt is an almost certain side effect if you let your anger manifest into action.