Showdown at the Home Depot Corral

People are angry these days.

I had something happen to me on Sunday that has never happened before.

I was building a little picket fence around our backyard garden to keep my canines from liberating the plants from the freshly tilled ground in our raised beds and while digging the post holes, I hit a sprinkler line.

I thought I knew where they were, but I was about a half an inch off on this one and caught the line with the edge of the blade of the post hole diggers, shattering about six inches of the 1" line. I didn't have any inch unions in my PVC stash, so I had to run to Home Depot to grab some fittings to patch it. As usual, the HD lot was packed with people doing spring projects and digging into sprinkler lines at 4PM on Sunday afternoon (when HD closes at 6) in the process.

I found one parking spot across from a new GMC 2500 series crew cab truck, the driver of which had tried to pack it all in the space but left about two feet hanging out into the lane.

I couldn't swing out wide enough to get my truck in the empty opposing space, so I pulled in a little past the space and backed up to better align and pull in. Thanks to Coach Kennedy, my high school driver's ed teacher, teaching us how to do a rapid "turnabout" maneuver, I was able to get a real truck into a space that was apparently designed by a former Yugo owner.

Just at that time there was a guy walking past the rear of my moving truck, I could see him in the back-up camera and in my mirrors, and as he got behind my truck he started gesticulating at me and turned to warn another person coming behind him of my reckless parking - even though I had both of them in my view.

So I pulled in and got out to go into the store and as I was walking across the parking lot this guy pulls by me, not 15 feet away, in his pretend SUV (one of those import, two wheel station wagons that just looks like a SUV), slows and yells, "You need to fucking learn to drive, asshole!"

I guess he was angry that they were out of 3/4" PVC tees or something - or that his wife made him return the M18 18V Lithium-Ion Cordless Combo Kit (5-Tool) w/SHOCKWAVE PACKOUT Screwdriving Bit Set & Bi-Metal Sawzall Blade Set he bought without her permission because when he walked past me, his hands were empty. I guess he filled that Milwaukee sized hole in his heart with frustration and anger.

I yelled back that I could see him the whole time and he was in no danger and he yells back, "Fuck you, you stupid bastard!" and flips me the single finger universal symbol of brotherly love, almost hitting a pedestrian walking in the crosswalk in the process.

Seeing my opportunity in this pause, I yelled, "I'm not the dumbass who chose to walk behind a moving vehicle", getting another "Fuck you!" and a finger with even more emphasis in response.

I'm a little embarrassed that I let a nothing situation escalate into a public shouting match right in front of the Home Depot. A little later on Sunday night, the local news had reports of road rage incidents in which a person, an innocent bystander, was killed, plus yet another report of an airline passenger going apeshit in mid-flight and being restrained by the crew, and I began to wonder "What if this jerk was armed? What if my responses had been the final straw and he decided to just shoot me?"

Situations like this, for me, are not common - and me yelling back is even less so - but I didn't do anything unsafe or put anyone at risk and I resented being cursed at in a public parking lot on a Sunday afternoon.

It was a quick run to the HD and I wasn't carrying - and it made me feel helpless, wondering how something so insignificant could have spiraled down so quickly, with me jumping right in.

You just never know these days from whence something like this comes and where it will go.

It was Home Depot, for goodness sake.

HD is like Switzerland, it is supposed to be neutral territory.