Downright rude

I'm beginning to wonder if there's something in the water.  Something that's making people generally more belligerant, rude, bad tempered and grumpy.

There have been a number of things lately that have led me to believe this.

Now, I'm generally the sort of person who says sorry when other people bump into them. I don't lose my temper often and I'm rarely really grumpy for no good reason. But, the other day I came home from dropping my step-daughter off at her school to find someone parked right across my gate so I couldn't drive into our driveway.

Most days I would plonk the car somewhere and then and then move it onto the drive later. Instead, I parked right in front of the offending car so that they wouldn't be able to drive off until I moved my car. [Typically, poo-pants from next door came along at this point with a smug look  on her face].

I wandered off into my kitchen and put the kettle on and lay in wait until the owner of the vehicle returned. Shortly after, a guy of about 35 appeared, looking around to see who's car was blocking him in. I went down the garden and he shouted "Sorry!" and went to get in his car. Again, my normally non-confrontational disposition deserted me.
"It's very inconsiderate you know, to park right across the gateway like that. Normally I'm just leaving for work now and you'd have made me very late". All said in a fairly reasonable tone of voice.
"Fuck off", came the reply. "I've said sorry, so don't give me a hard time".
Well, I was a bit taken aback by this and not really sure how I should respond to be honest. I ended up with a rather lame, "It's just really inconsiderate, that's all".
"Well, I was late and there's no parking around here" he replied.
"Not my problem I'm afriad", I said.
"It fucking is now that I'm parked across your gateway, innit?" he said with a bit of a flourish.
I gave up at this point and got into my car giving him a look with lips so thin that they had practically disappeared [my mother would be so proud].

Since this particular instance I've noticed that on a couple of occasions where I've been piqued enough to actually bother to remonstrate with anyone on the road that's done anything particularly daft on the motorway, or, in this morning's case, pulled out right in front of me at a junction, instead of saying sorry and sticking their hand up, they tend to stick two fingers up instead. Or worse, have a full on ragey shout in my direction accompanied with various hand and arm gestures.

There's two things that arise from this. One, if I didn't make my displeasure felt in the first place, the other people wouldn't be rude back and two, why are people so rude at all instead of just saying sorry? There's a third point too actually, what's come over me that I'm actually remonstrating with these people at all in the first place when normally I'd be waving them through and taking the blame on their behalf?

Should I just stop ever confronting anyone and instead of thinking of myself as a doormat think of it as opting out of putting myself in the path of rudeness? Or, should I feel that I'm fed up with always just backing down and letting other people get away scot free?

If I continue to pull people up, will it honestly make any difference other than making ME feel bad when people are rude? Do we think that those people will be sitting in their cars thinking, "Ooooh, wish I hadn't let off steam at that woman I cut up on the roundabout. Poor girl, wasn't her fault at all that I've had an utterly shit morning".

I think that I'll do myself a favour and opt out of confrontation and thereby avoid the rudeness and carry on living in my own happy little smiley world of pleasantness.