Dickheads. They’re everywhere, and growing in number, keeping pace with Trump’s lie-count.
That seems counterintuitive, given Darwinian natural selection should be thinning them out, but maybe the Australian climate is just conducive to them breeding fast?
You encounter them every day, especially in supermarket carparks with all those tightly marked parking spots and one-way signs to ensure first in gets a fair go.
Maybe the boofy, tattoo’ed Maloo-driving gentleman who spun his wheels as he swerved into a one-way feeder – the wrong way – in front of me on Sunday was dyslexic and had misread the arrows. Maybe he was suffering a mild concussion. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt — until he started cursing me for blocking his path.
Maybe his pills had passed their use-by date and he was having a bad day? I smiled sweetly and pointed to the one-way signage to help him understand.
So he planted his hand on his horn and started revving loudly. He didn’t really drop his lollies, though, until the vacant parking space he’d been aiming for was filled by a driver who came up behind me. That’s when he started screaming at me, demanding that I commit illegal sexual acts with my family.
As the saying goes, where are the cops when you need one?
Instead, a large (think communal brick dunny) gentleman wearing a private security uniform walked up and had words with the aggressive Dickhead. There was a bit of verbal argy-bargy during which the large gentleman pointed to the one-way signs, then started making a note of the Dickhead’s rego number.
Cue more gratuitous revving, a very aggressive reversing manoeuvre that fortunately did not take out any pedestrians, and Dickhead raced off, burning rubber, to visit his anger upon some other shopping precinct.
They’re not all that aggressive, but a disregard for those legal niceties that help us co-exist peacefully seems to be the common thread. They range from the idiots who deliberately detour into a left-lane that ends 50 metres up the road then force their way back in 10 cars along, to the prats who indicate AS they turn, instead of three seconds ahead. (Wake up, Dickhead: the indicators Don’t Make the Car Turn, so it’s pretty damned pointless using them IN the corner.)
And then there are the suicidal fools who do not, and never will, understand that traffic entering the roundabout/circle first has right of way. That seems to account for 90 per cent of drivers because they ALL seem to think approaching at 60km/h and playing chicken is the way to go.
It would be nice to think all readers of this site are among the 10 per cent who use their brains and exercise a little bit of courtesy on the roads. But I don’t believe in Father Christmas either.
People, the roads are a microcosm of our life on this Earth. The basic rules of civilised society — show some courtesy, respect other users, and don’t always put yourself first — can make our roads a much safer and more pleasant environment, just as they can make life in general less traumatic and more rewarding in the long run.
It comes down to this: Joe Stroker’s right to be a selfish arsewipe does not outweigh the greater right of his fellow citizens to not have to put up with Joe’s shit. If Joe insists on living by the law of the jungle, then sooner or later a bigger arsehole will turn up and wipe Joe out. And good fucking riddance.
Field Guide to identifying Dickheads off the road
People who:
- stop dead at the top (or bottom) of escalators to work out where they’re going;
- stand side-by-side in supermarket aisles to compare hernias, bruises and drunken husbands;
- allow their feral brats to touch fresh produce with their shitty, snotty hands;
- put “We’re Full, Fuck off” stickers on their bumpers;
- order the most expensive malt whisky – then add coke;
- look at their mobile phones while walking around;
- stand in the middle of the sidewalk to unfold and discuss a map;
- shit on underpaid counter-staff;
- chop down trees (illegally) to improve their view; and
- Anti-Vaxxers (if you haven’t seen a kid die of measles, shut up).
- Did I miss any? Feel free to add your own pet hates.
CHECKOUT: Don’t drink, don’t do drugs and get your hand off it