DRIVING FORCE
Sarah-Kate defends her mum against road rage!
I’m a girl who needs eight hours sleep. Actually, I’m a “lady” who needs eight hours sleep. There’s a big difference because once a “lady” gets to a certain vintage, catching eight hours sleep is like herding clouds – nigh on impossible.
Some nights, I am lucky to get four hours, but last night, I did not get one single wink. And do you know why? Because someone was mean to my mum. Can’t blame that sleeplessness on hormones – it was sheer rage ... and two glasses of sauvignon blanc. (White wine is also the enemy of the vintage lady attempting her beauty rest.)
Anyway, who among us hasn’t been in the middle of a fender bender? I’ve had many a whoopsie on the traffic-accident front, although most involve my car versus a parking building. Indeed, the last time someone backed into me was an almost happy event because I was outside the Haigh’s chocolate shop in Adelaide. The hapless backer was full of apologies, handed over her details, and I helped myself to some well-earned rocky road and went on my way.
But when my 83-year-old mother had a momentary lapse of concentration in a traffic jam on the Kapiti Coast and rearended someone’s towbar, no such pleasantness ensued. Instead, the driver of the car and her male companion were not only instantly aggressive, but they accused her of texting while driving.
Hello! Did they see her phone? It’s out of the vault at Te Papa. Even if she were inclined to break the law by updating her non-existent Facebook status, from what I have witnessed it takes three arms to operate her flip phone without having a steering wheel involved. Get real, you nasty pieces of work!
Had she been texting while driving with that thing, they should have handed over a medal. But she wasn’t. And they didn’t. Instead, before departing in a car that still operated perfectly well, the charming male companion picked up a broken piece of my mother’s bumper and threw it through the open window of her car like a Frisbee. With her sitting there. A dignified 83-year-old. Shame on you, sir. Shame on you.
If I knew your name, I’d find your house and put a burning bag of dog poop on your doorstep, then run away and watch from behind a tree as you stomped on it in bare feet and hopefully picked up some nasty verrucas. But luckily for you, my mother is not mean and will not reveal your name or phone number to any of her five children.
Consider yourself lucky because we are way less dignified, plus one of us is handy with a chainsaw, one is a strapping 1.9-metres tall with a girlfriend who once punched a possum, one is a lawyer, one will show you exactly what she can do with a Frisbee – and it requires surgical removal – and the other one is me.
You really should not mess with our mother. You really should not mess with anyone’s mother. Please, next time, think of your own mum and try being nice.