Most of us have heard second-hand tales of road rage, stories where the crazy guy follows you for a mile and a half because he didn't like the look of your turn signal. But today, for the first time, I heard the road rager telling the story. And it was even scarier.

I was stopping to get my morning coffee from the corner store, and, as I was filling my 15% recycled paper to-go cup, I found myself standing next to a fellow who was gleefully recounting how he terrorized a woman with two kids in her back seat. The "stupid bitch" had the nerve "cut him off" as she came onto the freeway from an on-ramp (something that I thought was called "merging") and he naturally responded by following her--cursing loudly and flipping her the bird--until she got off the freeway. When she came stopped at a light on the corner after the off-ramp, he rear-ended her (or, in his words, "gave her ass a smack") and then climbed out of his car so he could pound on her window while swearing at her. He was delighted to see the woman locking her car doors in terror, and was quite satisfied with the shrieking hysterics of her small children. As he put it, "Those little fellas won't be cutting nobody off!"

Until today, I think I never really believed the stories about road rage. They always seem to be second- or third-hand accounts that too closely resemble the urban legends of a psycho killer stalking Lover's Lane. Well, I bloody well believe them now. The look on that fellow's face was so content, so pleased, so confident that his actions were clearly in the right...the only thing more frightening was that three other people were listening to him and nodding in agreement.