Pardon this column because it includes a lot of whining. But you see the thing is if we walked around in a crowded public place the same way we act behind the wheel there would be a fistfight every five minutes. Or worse, given the times we live in.

If you think otherwise, imagine running up and cutting in line in front of someone waiting to check out at a cash register or order food. Or making a gesture at someone who gets in your way at the fast food restaurant.

It’s a daily fact of life on the roads, as people so bent on getting somewhere are oblivious to other drivers. If I had a dollar for every time someone cut around me to get into the Kroger on Highway 144 I’d probably be able to retire a month early. That said, grocery stores and big box retailers, and a lot of other public places, are every minute getting more like I-95 — or, better yet, Highway 204 or I-16 (which once upon a time had hardly any traffic on it until you got to Macon, and then it was like something out of a Mad Max movie).

I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, or a product of geography as more people born and raised elsewhere make their way south. Or if it’s just what happens when you have more people. Or if it’s just plain bad manners or a product of the self-esteem movement crossed with the “customer is always right” mantra of the service industry, which over time has created an insufferable generation of entitled adults who believe the hype. It’s not everyone, of course, but it’s like going to a rec sports game where one or two nutjob parents can turn what should be an enjoyable event into a nightmare for everyone concerned.

Anyway, I realize I’m out there adding to the congestion, so it was maybe my fault I got flipped off by a testy Hell’s Angel last week on Highway 204, the world’s most fun drive.

At least, he might of been a Hell’s Angel. Taking the finger into account, he could well have been a practicing proctologist, riding with an outlaw band of cool colorectal surgeons.

Besides, this biker might not have been a he/him, come to think of it. He could’ve been a she/her, or non-binary, or a them/it or a they/ those, or a she/he. He might’ve been one of the them/thar people some folks keep wanting to take the country back from. You never know.

He could’ve been a furry, even. And that might not’ve been an outlaw motorcycle gang. It might’ve been a school board out on a team building exercise. The guy with the finger could’ve been the superintendent.

All I know is on Thursday, June 8, 2023, said biker was one of several adults atop motorcycles who suddenly rumbled out from the entrance to Nine Line and yet another (bleeping) warehouse onto 204 without regard for oncoming traffic. I waved, sort of, and slowed to keep from sending a bunch of us to the ER for no good reason.

Next thing I know, there’s THE FINGER — though said digit might’ve been directed at the driver behind me whose front bumper was about six inches from buying me a new pickup.

If so, never mind all this. Besides we all went our separate ways and nobody died. I certainly didn’t, as far as I know. And luckily for me the Hell’s Angels or school board or whatever they called themselves were going in the other direction so they could go be obnoxious around other people.

Still, for a while I kept an eye out in my rearview mirror for the finger wielding biker. You never know these days, the person on the motorsiccle could’ve been a regular reader of this column and thus decided to hang a U-turn so he could track me down, rip off my arm and beat me upside the head with it a while. J But that’s how the commute often seems to shape up these days, what with dump trucks and tractor-trailers and delivery vans trading paint with imbeciles in pickups and large women in a hurry in expensive SUVs and unemployed middle-aged dope dealers on mopeds cluttering up the place.

And if there’s a spot where it all sort of gets sucked down to the bottom of the pool it’s that couple of square miles of weirdness in Chatham County where Highway 204 and I-95 meet. It’s there the poor sap commuter meets up with the panhandlers and grifters, and tourists who can’t figure out how to get off or on I-95 and so just make their own way through rush hour traffic taking whatever lane looks open; and the hundreds of thousands of dump trucks grinding their way through gear boxes hither and yon in clouds of dust and gravel, plowing through air forever smelling like burnt transmission fluid and fried chicken.

There is something banged up and psychotic about it, ever-changing but ever-the-same, something cumulative. It’s as bad as social media, which is also famous for turning people into psychopaths. That’s not social media’s fault, it’s the fault of people who can’t play nice. Nor is it the road’s fault. As Pogo put it, it’s us.