I few years ago I had an editor that I did some extracurricular corresponding with, mainly in the form of posing big or outlandish questions and writing creative responses to them. One such question was “what is the greatest lie that is most commonly believed?” Her answer was the following:

Mine probably has to do with the idea of “specialness,” the notion that one person is more important than the other. It’s fun to watch people drive to work in the morning. Everyone jockeying for position, sneak in this lane, sneak ahead of this guy, sneak past there. As if the universe has deemed one person’s getting to work on time more important than another’s. I was shopping this past Christmas season with my mom, and she illegally passed a string of about 15 cars to get out of the parking lot ahead of them. She said that *she* was in a hurry. As if no one else was.

While I tend to be an occasional law flouter, I try not to break the categorical imperative: the world would not be a worse place if everyone did as I do. I’m thinking of things like turning left on a red arrow at 11pm when there’s no traffic. On the other hand, I, like my editor, really dislike people who act like they’re the center of the universe. So anyway…

Last week, the day before my birthday, I was driving home from work at around 3:30pm, right as all the junior highs and highschools I pass are letting out. I was on Whittier Boulevard passing one junior high school, and the traffic was fairly slow, running about 30mph, compared to the usual 40 to 50. I’m in the right of two lanes, and in my right side-view mirror I see a rust-colored late-model Corvette doing around 55mph up the non-lane that composes the space between my lane and the parkway. This happens every few weeks: some spiky-haired kid in a Celica with a vestigial spoiler zooms up that non-lane doing around 60, sometimes with a buddy right behind him.

Not today, not with kids on the sidewalk. This guy is losing his ’special’ status. I slide my old Subaru wagon over to my right about four feet, effectively closing down the private expressway. Mr. Special is so pissed, and doesn’t slow down until he’s within thirty feet of me, and then slams on his brakes with all the requisite rubber complaint. The woman in the SUV behind me who watched it all is beaming. The Corvette swings in between us and into the left lane, then he pulls up next to me with his window down, his finger up, and his f-bomb flying. He’s in his mid-thirties: my age, but obviously with access to lots of money. I just grin at him. He makes shooting gestures at me and I wave my hands and pretend to be scared. I wait for him to cut in front of me and slam on the brakes, but he doesn’t want my station wagon getting intimate with his weekly detail. He moved on ahead of me in traffic.

About five lights later, through a trick of timing, I come up to a red light, still in the same lane, and Mr. Special is in the left lane, around half a car length ahead of me. If I crowded the car in front of me, I could be even with his window, but I’m not interested. I can see that he’s trying to get my attention though. He waves out the window and then he rummages through his glove compartment. I wonder if he’s actually going to try to shoot me, but then he waves a stethascope out the window. I pull up to him to see what he’s trying to tell me:

“YOU *******! I’M A SURGEON! I’VE GOT A GUY BLEEDING TO DEATH A MILE FROM HERE! WHY ARE YOU SUCH A **********?”

I yell back, “How is anyone supposed to know that? You know, since you’re special, you need a huge sign to put on your roof that says “Hey everybody, as a matter of fact, I really AM special!”"

The purported surgeon repeated a couple of variations of the same thing again and then the light turned green. I drove on home not quite sure what to think. Was I just a big jerk for taking an opportunity to chalk one up for the people, meddling spitefully, or did this guy expect too much special treatment from the rest of the world? Thirty minutes later, as I was out with one of my sons, I thought about going by the hospital to see if I could find this guy’s car in the doctor’s parking area and leave a brief, apologetic note. I think I believe that he was actually speeding to a surgery, so I feel bad, but there’s another part of me that thinks that he shouldn’t have been so outraged at having been ‘leveled.’

In the last few days I’ve mostly made up my mind that I was wrong to cut the guy off. I shouldn’t care if he was rushing to the bar to catch the first quarter of a basketball game or if he was rushing his wife to the delivery room–my role isn’t to decide, it’s to extend grace, even to people who are convinced that they are the exception to the rules.

But there are reasons to hesitate there too: since this guy had become a hazard to public safety in a school zone, there are more factors at play. What if I had done nothing, and fifty feet ahead of me he had rammed some mom who made a late decision to turn right into the school parking lot? By extending grace, are there any civic responsibilities that I might be abdicating?

What would you do if you had it in you to be as presumptious as I am and had ample time to weigh the decision?