...When All is Said and Dunn

A couple of weeks ago on the front page of the Daily News, the headline screamed “It’s Road Rage Season.” Apparently, as the temperature rises, so does the incidence of road rage. The basis of the article was based on statistics compiled by the American Automobile Association. In addition to warning about the potential peril of road rage, the article also offered tips on how to avoid becoming a victim.

While the four suggestions they gave were sound, avoid cutting someone off, don’t tailgate, don’t make obscene gestures, and avoid eye contact, I found it a little bizarre that something like road rage has all of a sudden been given its own season. Like it was a holiday or a sport. Obviously they didn’t conduct their survey in the San Gabriel Valley where you run the risk of road rage 24/7, no matter what the temperature is.

While I don’t condone rage in any form, I certainly understand the motivation. There are certain things that raise the ire in all of us and during the summer months it seems to be blossoming all around us. So instead of road rage season I think that the summer months should just be referred to simply as “rage season.”

It could be somebody running by you at the beach and kicking sand in your face or in your food that sets you off, to the point where you want to hurl your full size Coleman ice chest at them. Maybe it is the person in front of you at the drive through window at Burger King who wants to discuss the entire menu at length with the disembodied person on the loudspeaker that makes you want to get out of the car and throw them in the deep fryer with the fries and onion rings, making them kind of a human chicken nugget. While you would never act on it, the thought always seems to linger in the back of your mind.

Then there is the rage you see at the end of the baseball season when the All Star Teams are announced. The sheer venom and rage that are exhibited by some of the parents when the names are announced and for weeks afterwards, is something that I still can’t quite understand. Sure it’s a disappointment if your child doesn’t make it, but my God, it’s only Little League.

The way some parents react you would think that their child had just been given a death sentence instead of not being chosen for a team that practices for two weeks straight in the heat to possibly play only 2 games. I have 2 kids that both play ball. One made it and one did not. I know the elation and disappointment that comes on both sides of the coin.

Sure it’s great when they make it but the world is not going to implode if they don’t. This is a bit of rage you should check at the door when the season begins and come to the reality that even if your kid has a stellar season he or she might not make it. Why? Don’t ask. It is far too maddening to try and figure it out. So get over it!

There is one little thing that happens when the weather heats up that makes me absolutely insane -- umbrellas. I understand their use during the rainy months and if you happen to be walking down a semi-vacant street on a sunny day. When it comes to crowds, especially Little League or Soccer games, they should be banned. Most of the people that do it act as though it’s their right to have shade regardless of how rude it is to the people around them.

If you are going to bring an umbrella to any youth sporting event you should be treated like smokers are treated, you should be made to sit away from the rest of the group. At baseball games you should be relegated to the outfield and at soccer games the end zone. The rage that I feel when someone plants themselves in the stands and whips out an umbrella blocking the view of everyone behind and to the sides of them, makes me want to take it and insert it in them and open it up. I actually think I saw that happen in a Bugs Bunny cartoon once and it seemed to work pretty good if memory serves.

No matter what may set you off during this season of rage, please try and keep your cool. Unless, of course, it requires the use of an umbrella.

The Shrub Speaks: “Well, it’s an unimaginable honor to be the president during the Fourth of July of this country. It means what these words say, for starters. The great inalienable rights of our country. We’re blessed with such values in America. And I-its-I’m a proud man to be the nation based upon such wonderful values.” - Visiting the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C., July 2, 2001.