The Double Tap

Everyone has seen a cyclist or group of them and wanted to hit them with your car, right? Right? Well, the difference between me and you is I actually followed through and did it.

It was a crisp September evening; the year was 2020. I was invited to go see Alesso, the highly esteemed Swedish DJ, with my sister's then boyfriend, Andrew, in Brooklyn NY. However, I was the only one who had a car. The car in question: my 1997 Subaru Legacy. It couldn't go over 60 mph, required me to enter in a four-digit code near the gear shift before it would turn on, and in the Winter had a 40% success rate of starting.

As you can see my vehicle had a very long body and many blind spots, making it a bit tricky when parallel parking, which is exactly what I had to do when we got to the venue in NYC.

I was trying to finagle my trusty Subaru into a small opening between two cars when all of a sudden, I heard a blood-curdling yelp. I stopped and looked behind me. It seemed I had unknowingly squished an innocent bicyclist, pinning him between the back of my car and the car behind me. Fearing I had turned him into Lieutenant Dan, I instantly pulled forward.

He reacted like the stereotypical New Yorker, throwing up native hand signals and yelling profanities. He didn't look banged up to me. And to be honest, HE should've watched where HE was going! Where did he even come from? Why would he ride his bike right where he saw me trying to park my car?

So, with that little blip out of the way I regained my composure, and I resumed trying to get into the parking spot. I had to make haste, because we were already running late. So, I threw that puppy in reverse. I was almost about to complete the last stages of the parallel parking job when all of a sudden, I heard more piercing screaming and cursing. I looked behind me once more, and I cringed.

Somehow, I had re-squished the same guy, and I really got him good this time. Let's just say it was questionable whether or not blood supply was getting to his legs at this point. He ferociously slammed both of his hands down on my trunk. I pulled forward and un-pinned him once more. He was not playing around this time. He was IRATE. He began to aggressively walk towards the passenger seat window where innocent passenger, Andrew, was sitting. Now, Andrew was a 6'3, 225 lbs, West Point cadet who liked to talk a big game. But, when he saw the angry 4-foot 16 inch feminine-framed cyclist marching towards him you could see the fear in his face as he audibly whispered, "oh no." The guy started pounding on the window while Andrew desperately tried to avoid making eye contact.

The angry biker demanded that Andrew roll down the window. Unwillingly, Andrew rolled the window down about this much:

He then raised his head up towards the cracked window and said, "Hey man, can I help you?" The guy, looking wild-eyed and crazed, replied, "Can you help me? CAN YOU HELP ME?! That B*@$! just hit me with her car...TWICE!"

Andrew responded with, "Yeah man, she's really sorry. She has absolutely no idea what she's doing." To which I was like:

But I decided it was best if I remained silent as I wasn't sure where all of this unwarranted negative energy was going. In my opinion, he was being a bit dramatic. I also didn't really appreciate all the choice words he was saying about me. I'm not saying that his anger wasn't justified, but he definitely overreacted. He acted like I did this to him:

When in reality it was more like this:

Way less bad.

We watched as the angry biker walked back to his bike, further proving an overreaction because his gait was completely normal, and he clearly did not suffer any lasting injuries. He turned around and gave us one of these:

Then he angrily road away, both him and his bike unscathed. Andrew and I sat in silence for a few moments before I said, "Ok, what the heck was that guy's problem?!" I could not wrap my head around why that man had such an unreasonable amount of rage. Andrew just shrugged his shoulders and gave me a beats-me type of look.

Turns out third time was a charm to parallel park in that spot. Andrew and I finally got to the concert and had a grand time.