Of jerks and knee-jerks

I’ve been thinking a lot about Thomas Junta lately.

He’s the hockey dad who was recently convicted of beating another hockey dad to death in full view of a rink full of horrified kids, including his own and that of his victim, Michael Costin.

Mr. Junta is a man that some reporters described as “hulking,” a 270-pound truck driver with a jutting jaw and, by all accounts, a serious anger-management problem. Is anyone out there surprised to hear that this so-called “gentle giant” had a record of arrests for previous assaults? That Junta’s own wife had sought a restraining order after he struck her in front of their kids?

Mr. Junta described the altercation that led to Mr. Costin’s death as “a stupid guy thing” that simply got out of hand. His attorney characterized Junta’s actions as self-defense. The prosecution scoffed at this description, noting the testimony of witnesses that placed Mr. Junta at the end of the fight sitting atop Mr. Costin’s chest, slamming his opponent’s head against the concrete rink floor, while bystanders screamed at him to stop.

How does a shouting match escalate into violence and death? How could anyone lose control that completely over something so trivial?

I was mulling this over as I drove home the other day. It was snowing and it looked like it was going to be a fairly substantial accumulation. The wind whipped huge white flakes around my windshield. I was more than a little anxious; our house is at the top of a continuous two-mile incline that rapidly becomes too slick to negotiate in icy weather.

As I turned the corner on the last quarter-mile before my driveway, I saw two vehicles stopped in the road, headed in opposite directions. The windows of both vehicles were open; the drivers, soccer-mom types, were holding an animated conversation in mid-road, oblivious to the snow and my elderly little car rolling to a stop behind them.

I paused a few seconds, waiting for them to finish their talking and move on. No response – the conversation continued. I tapped my horn, thinking that perhaps they hadn’t noticed me. Still no response. I waited a full thirty seconds, the snow falling faster by the second, and then tapped my horn again.

Their heads whipped around in my direction. Once more second or so of conversation, and then, finally, the Acura in the oncoming lane began to move. The driver, a thirtyish, expensively-dressed woman, her carefully made up face contorted with rage, pulled up beside me just long enough to extend an immaculately-manicured middle finger at me through her open window, and then sped past. The driver in front of me sat there passive-aggressively in the road for another thirty seconds, and then took off suddenly with a roar, vanishing over the top of the hill.

Why this ugliness? All I had done was make the two of them aware that they were blocking a public thoroughfare. I had tried to do this as politely as possible, short of getting out of my vehicle and saying pretty please. The sense of entitlement behind their ignorance was breathtaking. This wasn’t suburbia, and a country road is not a shopping-mall parking lot. The idea that they had the right to hold up traffic, in a snowstorm, at a time of day when school busses were trying to drop off passengers, and then to flip me the bird when I was clearly justified in honking… well, it was beyond arrogant.

If you think, dear reader, that I’m going to compare that soccer mom to Thomas Junta, you’re wrong. Because I although I clearly had the right-of-way, and she clearly acted in a way that spoke of trailer park rather than country club manners, I had no right to the moral high ground. Because I lost it the moment I automatically returned her obscene gesture with one of my own.

Now, if I can go from benevolent to self-righteous to stupid in a half-second, how can I hold myself above someone like Thomas Junta, a walking powder keg if ever I saw one?

Anger is a habit. It’s addictive as any narcotic, and just as destructive. We learn it from any number of sources, and turn to it instantly when threatened or confronted. The more primitive center of the brain flames to overload, and the part making us “a little lower than the angels” is swamped by an overwhelming urge to strike out, to reduce that offending sonofabitch to road kill. Another flawed human being is instantly transformed into The Enemy, someone whom it is okay to hurt and degrade. And it feels good, doesn’t it?

Except that it doesn’t work. That kind of uncontrolled anger isn’t expiated by acting out. Instead, the response becomes more ingrained, harder to shake, until the day when any little thing sets the monster loose. Like a junkie looking for his next fix, any wound to pride or self-esteem–no matter how insignificant, no matter how transient–is sufficient excuse to release that ol’ adrenaline, to get our own back, to show ’em who’s boss.

I would be nice if Ms. Acura had the good sense to feel as foolish about her reaction as I did about mine once I got home and out of the snow. But it really doesn’t matter–because the only one whose behavior I can control is my own, and if I can’t resist repaying boorishness in kind, then it doesn’t matter who starts it.

So next time, I’ll keep my hands to myself.