I’m a fairly calm driver. Getting worked up by bad driving conditions or heavy traffic or clueless drivers only serves to gin up plenty of cortisol for the body. Cortisol bad.

Yet, certain driving behaviors still drive me batty. I usually let them slide off me. But if I don’t let it go, overly aggressive and selfish driving makes me furious. I can easily begin to loathe these drivers.

My fantasy is to become mockingly enraged at them so that they see it and know it. They will of course react. I will then become more mockingly enraged. Hand gestures will be involved. Overly theatrical swearing. Menacing tailgating or abrupt stopping.

They become even madder. They gesture back and behave even more aggressively. Then I laugh at them. I make sure they see me laughing at them. They become apoplectic. Game over. I win.

I’ve had the satisfaction of making those few minutes of their life very unpleasant. I know they can’t get that time back. I’ve taken something from them.

But that’s not the evil part of the fantasy. The evil part of the fantasy is that I know adrenalin and cortisol are coursing through their veins. I know these are poisons. I know these poisons are destroying their quality of life and shortening their life spans. I’ve taken life from them. How evil is that? Pretty evil.

But I can’t do it. Why not? It’s not that I don’t think there are certain people who deserve it. Because I do. I can’t do it because I don’t know which ones deserve it and which ones don’t, which ones are just having a bad day. And life is hard enough.

As Gandalf would say, “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

So while I can allow myself to fantasize, I can’t make myself act. OK, maybe I have acted once. I’m no Gandalf, ya know.