I was going the usual way to school from my house on what seemed like a perfectly ordinary morning, but little did I know that something would happen that day that I would remember for the rest of my life. I guess it was a form of road rage - or was it abuse? Not another man/woman hitting the same gender, but a big six foot, strapping bloke hitting an innocent woman who had simply made a mistake whilst driving to work, or wherever she might have been going.
What actually happened not only shocked me, but made me very angry toward this piece of scum, who hit a poor woman. She didn’t even know what was going on until the man shouted at her, then hit her.
The story goes like this. My Father and I were driving up to the motorway bridge over the M40 when we saw a bit of a commotion up ahead. My Father immediately slowed down to approach the scene. At that point I saw a man who appeared to be the victim because he was on the other side of the road with a great dent in the side of his car, and the woman only had a small crumple on the front of her car.
The thing that followed was most distressing. As the man stepped out of his car to observe the damage, he was shocked and walked over to the woman who looked to be crying. She was obviously very upset. Then it hit me that it was not her fault but his fault for being so ignorant and thinking he ruled the road, that he had the right to pull out when he wanted and she accidentally hit him side-on.
What happened next was very upsetting. The man started to walk over to the woman, who wound down her window, presuming he was going to apologize for pulling out. Instead he shouted something I couldn’t hear, then hit her full-on in the face. Seeing this made me really angry. Dad pulled up next to the incident and said to the man, “Do you normally hit women?” The man looked at Dad and then walked away. Dad asked the woman if she was all right, then he drove off. Whilst we were driving off my Dad phoned the police and told them where the incident was and I think the man was later arrested at his workplace. I only hope he felt bitter embarrassment and got sacked afterwards.
I think the incident affected me most because up until then I was living in a protected world, only saw this sort of thing on TV and knew it to be fake. To see it in the flesh was a bit of a shock to my system. I thought it was just something that didn’t happen in this modern world. Obviously some people in this society are still neanderthals.
In my mind this raised a big question. What was this? Simple road rage, or a case of some bully hitting a weaker person?
If I looked at the situation with two human beings (no gender mentioned), then I would see someone getting angry and losing his temper toward another person. But if I look at it in the way it really happened, I see two cars, a man and a (physically) weaker woman. In the modern world, we are taught that men should not hit women because they are not as strong as us, so it is seen as a form of bullying. Weirdly, this does not apply to this man, but wait he isn’t above the law is he, he just thinks he is. However, he is not and that is why he was arrested.
Well, that is the most disturbing thing that has happened to me in my life and has changed it as well. Now, when I watch programs or adverts I relate back to the incident and feel even more strongly about not hitting someone weaker than myself.
The End
