This morning as I was backing down the driveway, I did the usual look to my left and right then put my arm on the head rest of the passenger seat, turn to look back and proceed in backing up.  No sooner did I get out into the street when a car, that appeared to be in a hurry and did not look like it was going to let me finish backing up came tearing down my street.  I stopped to let him go past me, but he stopped as if expecting me to pull forward so he could get his (daddy’s) BMW past me without having to swerve a little.  Realizing this I put my van in drive and proceeded to try and pull forward.  All would have been okay, except that the transmission in my van has a leak that we need to get fixed, that until we do, we have to keep putting transmission fluid in.  Which I usually check before I leave but did not do this morning and so rather than pull forward when I put it drive, the car rolled further down the driveway, making the kid in the BMW so pissed that he honked his horn at me and flipped me off.  At which point I became a little flustered at the uncooperative car and concerned that the punk in the Beamer who by that point had rolled his window down and was proving his manliness to me by using grown up words like f*ck and b*tch in a complete sentence WHILE practicing his signing skills, would get out and further prove his manliness on me, my kid or my car.  In my flustered state and not wanting to enrage him any further I prayed and put the car in drive again only to have the car roll back even further.  Not knowing what else to do as the car did not seem like it was going to move foward without me getting out and putting transmission fluid in it, which I was not about to do, I just sat there and waited for him to go around me.  Which he did.  Once past me, he rolled his window down all the way, put his head out, cussed at me some more and then threw his cigarette butt in my direction as if to punctuate his displeasure.  My demeanor had not changed, aside from being a little flustered, since I had gotten into my car.  I did not retort, though I did mouth I’m sorry a couple of times as the car rolled back.  The car having sat for a moment, picked that moment to actually start moving.  So as Beamer kid rolled slowly and deliberately toward the stop sign, I pulled slowly behind him and put my turn signal on.  I could feel his eyes burning into me via his rearview mirror as I pulled up behind him.  At which point I dug my phone out of my purse and called my husband, asking him to remain on the phone with me until the menacing idiot had moved on.  Which he did at the light.  Once the threat passed and I had a minute to think about it, I thought that perhaps if I had explained that I wasn’t trying to be rude, that I was having car trouble and wanted nothing more than to let him pass but could not get the car up the driveway, then maybe he wouldn’t have reacted to aggressively.  But the truth is, he scared me a little bit.  I was by myself with my 8 year old and his demeanor went from zero to pissed in the span of a few seconds.  But what struck me the most was that neither my age, gender or  a lack of aggression on my part made him stop for even a second.  Maybe if I had been a guy he would actually have gotten out of the car instead of just throwing his cigarette butt at me, but that’s of little comfort when I think about my 16 year old son being on the road with people like him. You know, I don’t expect anyone to lay their coat down for me so my feet don’t get wet in the puddles.  I don’t even expect the door to be held open or my chair to be pulled out for me.  I didn’t even mind pulling forward so that HE could go by first.  But is it too much to ask for people not look like they’d like to have someone’s head on a platter over something like having to go around the other driver?  Even if I HAD been being slightly rude, would my behavior have warranted his?  But the situation did not make me wonder if chivalry was dead, it made me think that manners and self restraint are on the brink of extinction.  That’s all for now. Ciao!  Hasta la pasta baby!