FURY<\/p>\n
\nAnger is never without a reason,
\nBut seldom a good one.
\nBenjamin Franklin<\/p>\n
Whenever I go back to the San Francisco Bay Area, I am immersed in non-stop road rage.\u00a0 Drivers swerve around you, hit the accelerator to get ahead of you, blast their horns to tell you to get out of their way and spew hate all over the highway.\u00a0 I find myself getting just as angry as the other drivers as I try to weave my way through 6 lanes of traffic to get to my destination.\u00a0 I come home exhausted, despising humanity and hating myself for succumbing to the hysteria that clogs our roads.<\/p>\n
It is a glorious relief to come to peaceful Brighton where I walk everywhere, smile at everyone and love treading the streets. Humanity charms me when I am here and I find myself enjoying the kindly hustle and bustle on North Street.<\/p>\n
I have always thought that road rage was so foreign to those who use public transportation in Britain, that they would sooner stage a massacre than be rude to another person.\u00a0 Besides, it is not in the British personality to be rude or overbearing.\u00a0 The people in this country are obsessed with being politically correct.<\/p>\n
Or so I thought.<\/p>\n
I just spent two weeks in London living in Stockwell and taking the tube to Leicester Square. That was when I was exposed to Tube Rage.\u00a0 If I dared to try to tap my oyster card on the entrance gate during rush hour, I risked black and blue marks, mangled hips and fractured elbows.\u00a0 When I approached the escalator, I was so terrified I shut my eyes and prayed to the almighty that my foot wasn\u2019t crushed and I was not hurled down the moving staircase because I forgot to stand on the left.<\/p>\n
It turns out that all this pushing, shoving, jostling and crushing is not due to rudeness at all.\u00a0 It is the result of poor ventilation.\u00a0 In fact the director of the British association of Anger Management warns that lack of oxygen is sure to cause uncontrolled acts of aggression.<\/p>\n
What a relief!! I thought all those people shoving me around were ageist brutes who didn\u2019t care that I am elderly and frail.\u00a0 How wrong I was! When the British push you out of their way, it is a silent cry for air.<\/p>\n
Which brings us right back to Brighton where fresh air is always swirling about us, filling our lungs with new oxygen from France.\u00a0 I boarded a train at London Victoria and two people hit me in the shin in their rush to get to the coach first. One lady smashed her suitcase into my hip and another yanked my shoulder into a vertical position to reach the aisle seat.\u00a0 The minute we all got off the train in Brighton, everyone was smiling, inhaling the lovely oxygenated air and loving one another.\u00a0 A gentleman carried my case to the station, a lady held my arm lest I trip and two lovely young men with grandmother complexes bought me a coffee.<\/p>\n
The oxygen cure would not work in America however.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t the air that infuriates them; it is the government.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FURY Anger is never without a reason, But seldom a good one. Benjamin Franklin Whenever I go back to the San Francisco Bay Area, I am immersed in non-stop road…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[837],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-joe-cillo"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"