Experience The Road Rage - I Did
I can now proudly proclaim that I am a member of the Victims of Road Rage club - as in, someone who has now personally experienced genuine road rage as opposed to a toot of the horn and a fuck you with a flip of the bird as they drive away.
Let me tell you all the juicy details...
I was coming down a hill that had a small, nothing speed bump half way down. I was about to hit the speed bump and a guy up ahead on the right was parked in his driveway looking at me. He then back out right in front of me and stopped in the middle of the road. As it was a road that allowed overtaking, I simply went around him and kept going. I turned left a couple hundred yards further up, then left into a gas station another couple hundred yard further up.
As I put the nozzle into my car, the guy pulled in front of me, got out and yelled "I oughta punch ya fuck'n head in."
I calmly looked at this moron and he yelled it again, "I oughta punch ya fuck'n head in" as he walked towards me.
As he approached me I was contemplating how I was going to hit him IF he made a move. And having figured out what I was going to do, kept pumping my gas.
He got a couple of feet away from me and yelled again that he oughta punch me out. I just quite calmly looked at him. Which must have set him on edge because I didn't flinch, blink, back away or look in anyway intimidated. Then he said, "ain't cha got noth'n ta say?"
I paused, took a step towards him!, looked him square in the eyes and in a direct, firm voice full of control, and at a volume only he could hear, said, "I see no need to justify anything you said by replying" and turned to watch my gas numbers.
Well, that sent him into a deeper craze. He went off about how I came down the hill and blah blah blah. I took another step towards him and said, "It's ok. There was no danger. I could see you and what you were doing and you could see me. No danger." And went back to my gauges on the bowser, while watching him out of the corner of my eye.
Ah. That response sent him into froth-at-the-mouth mode. "Danger? Danger? I'll tell you about fuck'n danger." He came right up to me, a couple of inches away from my face and again threatened to punch my head in. Then it dawned on him that I wasn't the slightest bit perturbed or concerned by him. I had a look in my eyes of complete and utter self-assuredness that I would take him out in a heart beat if he pushed it. (Remember, I had already decided how I was going to finish him off. And that my martial art is BaGua Zhang - the martial art of overkill that concentrates on deathpoint blows and inflicting grievous bodily arm.)
He, now not sure of himself, took three steps back and yelled, "I'm gonna get your number and give it ta me mate at the cop shop and he's gonna come visit cha."
I asked, "And which police station does he work at?"
He replied, "Southport. I'm gonna give him ya number and he'll come visit cha."
I then asked, "Oh, would that be So-And-So, the officer in charge?" (Little does he know I am on a first name basis with a dozen or so of the police at that station as well as the officers in charge of two other stations.) But he was fart-assing around in his car looking for a pen.
I walked in to pay for my gas and he came storming in and tried to tell the cashier what I was guilty of - that I went around him after he backed out of his driveway and stopped in the middle of the road - and walked around the counter and grabbed a pen.
I went outside to offer him a piece of paper from my notepad but he already had one, so I jotted down his tags instead and went back in to pay for my gas.
I asked the cashier if he was a friend of her's and she replied, "We don't have friends here." I asked "What is he then?" and she replied, "Just a regular customer." I paid, got my receipt and drove off.
The interesting thing is, during the entire confrontation - even when he was inches away from my face - I was totally calm and had no adrenaline coursing through me. And this only comes about because of complete self-assuredness.
Think of it like this... the first time you do something new, such as go over a jump on your bicycle, you will feel an adrenaline rush. And maybe again for the first few times. But after a while that rush is not there and you now know you have the situation under control.
It was the same with me in this instance. If he had made a move I was going to strike his throat, crushing his windpipe and putting him out of action. And this is possible in BaGua Zhang thanks to what we call Fa-Jing (explosive energy ). It is an explosive move that resembles sneezing.
When you sneeze, the body gives a quick, sharp jerk. Using that same principle, there is no need for withdrawing the striking arm to cock it in readiness to release. Tere is no need to get into a stance to strike. There is just full-powered release from any angle, with the entire body moving and the force of the blow fully directed at the target. (BaGua Zhang is the only martial art that does all its strikes while in full motion - no stances.)
You may have heard stories of warriors going into battle and being completely calm - and therefore devastating. Or you may have heard how the founder of Aikido experienced this calmness during a fight he was experiencing, and upon that moment he became machine like with computer speed - his actions and reactions so fast as if he could read the opponent's mind and know beforehand where the blow was going to be.
This calmness is very real. And to someone who faces such an opponent, it is very unsettling. Because it gives them total 100% self-doubt about the confrontation.
And this is what happened in my example. He reverted from threats of physical harm to telling me he was going to tell on me, just like any scared child will do when they realize they are powerless to do something - they threaten to tell someone they deem to be in authority who can deal with it for them.
Maybe this is what Bruce Lee called, fighting without fighting.

