Wednesday, June 25, 2003

It’s a little after 3:30pm, and I’ve just arrived home from work. I could be in a hospital right now, or in custody at a police station. But no, I’m home. I wasn’t hurt physically, and I didn’t hurt anyone. It’s quite possible that last night’s entry has saved my life.

It was around 2:55pm, Jefferson‘s students had been dismissed 6 minutes before. As is my custom, I was on the street trying to direct traffic. At one point the driver of one of the parked cars was ready to leave its spot. I stepped deeper into the street to signal a moving car to stop and give way to the car that was leaving, that way creating an available spot for another car to park. Its driver did not step on the brakes fully, the car kept moving. It seemed she had no plans of stopping. In fact, she didn’t. The left side of the car’s bumper pressed my legs.

In asking its driver to be careful, she screamed obscenities at me and immediately said to the person she was talking to on the phone, “There’s this asshole who [blah blah blah].”

This lady was getting out of hand. I could have stood in front of her car and fuck up her life, but my life would have been fucked, too — I truly believe she wasn’t going to use the brakes. I mean, if I’ve ever met anyone who wasn’t going to make good use of reason, she was it. It seemed that nothing was going to ease her determination to not be intimidated, and I wasn’t about to confirm that and at the same time become another statistic. After all, she reminded me of the guy in yesterday’s entry, now doing time in prison for running over two kids. What good would it have done me to know that she’d end up in jail for a good amount of years?

True, she pissed me off. I felt like kicking her car or smashing her window with my fist, but I didn’t even go as far as telling her a single obscenity. And that’s good in the long run, but in the meantime I had to keep my rage within, and when I do that the rage leaves my body through my eyes, in the form of tears. I cried a few minutes after the incident. I wiped my small tears from my eyes using the tip of my right thumb, trying not to let the students and parents around me see what was taking place.

Three or four students stared at me, but they didn’t think I was really crying. Mr. Quiterio, sometimes the strictest staff member at Jefferson, crying? No, that couldn’t be it. But it was.

I do not take shame in crying. It’s my way of reflecting. I have the potential to cause great harm because of so much rage that I carry within. This rage is well-hidden, asleep, but it’s put on high-alert the moment I’m on harm’s way. Fortunately, my rage has not taken me beyond tears. I have not reacted violently, and I hope I never do, because it only takes an instant to ruin one’s life. One punch, one kick, one stab, an obscenity, a single pull of a trigger… that’s all it takes.

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