To the impatient woman in the jeep who lost her shit on me today:

At the ridiculously packed street by the soccer field, on a sunny Saturday morning. For 5-year-old soccer. And then rolled down your window so that you could yell “Dumbass” at me. With my 3-year-old niece and nephew and their 79-year-old grandma in the minivan. I'm going to give you the grace you so clearly need today. I’m sorry if you were late for something. I’m sorry that you live by a soccer field, or had a kid who needed to get to soccer as well. Or just took the wrong street on a Saturday morning, not knowing that it was wall to wall vehicles, with only room for one to pass at a time, like a rural minimum maintenance road. Or whatever. Perhaps you felt that was constructive criticism of my driving. You don’t know it’s not my minivan; I barely know the way to the soccer field; and that I was trying to pull over by the driveway to let you through when you kept inching forward so that I couldn’t.

I’m sure that whatever you were going to was more important than whatever dumbass me and my family were doing when we so clearly intentionally blocked your way. (please use sarcastic tone for that sentence, Jeep lady). Certainly, you pulling to the side by the driveway was not an option. Thank goodness I didn’t let my family out to cross the road in front of you. I fear you may have taken your anger out on them.

You have no way of knowing that I have had a brain injury, although right now you are likely saying, ”figures.” That all of us slept 12 hours last night and are still chronically sleep deprived. I’m going to assume that you are also overscheduled and under-slept, and perpetually stressed. You haven’t realized how to live in the moment. You are sadly unable to see the sunshine, the kids playing for popsicles and the opportunity to be with their friends.

I’m not going to thank you for calling me “DUMBASS”. I am quite aware that I’m not quite as sharp as I used to be. You don’t know that. Perhaps you are an essential worker in some capacity, and if we met, we’d actually have more in common than you think. I suspect not.

I hope that your day improved after you vented your anger on me and the kids and their grandmother. I know that you didn’t ruin mine.