What is the world coming to?

This week I have been bad. Here are the three things I did that got me into the most trouble: 1) I did not run over a cyclist. 2) I exercised my dogs. 3) I called my adult son a kid.

First, the cyclist. I was driving and about to go left, indicating and braking as you do when changing direction, but then braking harder still because a cyclist was flying down the inside and I’d have hit him had I turned.

Now I can only assume the chap behind me was forced to brake too, because as he overtook me he wound down his passenger window and swore at me.

Then I was exercising my pups in the local park, when two joggers – a man and a woman – ran by and said dogs should be on leashes.

However, I have checked the local bylaws. Pets are allowed off-lead in city parks until 11am. I explained this, they denied it, and told my my dogs were “disgusting, sh*tting all over the place,” even though I carry poo bags, and pick up their mess.

But that was not the end of it, next time they came around the man leapt into my face shouting, telling me I was a “stupid b*tch,” and it all got rather heated.

Later, I was on the phone – to someone who likes me (I think) – when in passing I referred to my adult son as “poor kid,” because he’s sick.

It was like kicking a wasps’ nest. The ensuing diatribe lasted for several minutes, during which I was told my boys are not kids but “grown men” and “they need to learn”.

Learn what I do not know, because I said goodbye and hung up, scared I’d start crying.

Yes, in reality all of these are non-issues, meltdowns over nothings, but they left me shaken.

I’m seeing such overreactions more and more, with public showdowns, and random explosive rants, and sharp elbows in queues, and obnoxious phone users, and entitled abuse of strangers, and high horses ridden hard.

Perhaps it reached its apogee at a recent gig, when the man behind me smoked cigarette after cigarette indoors, and the drunk in front of me vomited on everyone, laughing.

It’s this new age, I guess. Ours is in an increasingly selfish, trolling, mannerless, Trumpian world, where bigotry has been rebranded as plain-spokenness, and everyone else is just someone standing in your way.