I was having a good morning until...

As is usual, my son got on his bike and I put my daughter on my bike and off we went to school this morning. It was warmer than normal (this winter I've taken the bus two or three times and my wife's dropped us all off once or twice), so it was almost pleasant on the ride down the hill to his school. The school sits on one of those one way streets that's single lane but is used by so many commuters to get across town, and the commuter in a good mood is a rare thing indeed.

It just so happens that on Mondays the schoolchildren assemble, weather permitting, on the playground outside the school and have a short assembly: announcements, class presentations, etc. This morning weather permitted, and the children were assembled listening to the principal. The traffic on the street was bad, and this one driver, all alone in his Maryland tagged light green Saab, decided that right in front of the school he needed to lay on his horn. Repeatedly.

Surprisingly enough, the gridlocked traffic didn't dissolve at the blast of the trumpet like the walls coming down at Jericho, but that didn't stop him. On and on he pounds on the horn until I go over to him and ask him (I paraphrase now), "WTF is wrong with you, you idiot?" and I point at the children at assembly. Mind you, I'm on a bike and am in no way responsible for his delay, but he looks straight at me and lays on the horn. I laughed at him and turned back to the assembly.

The great irony -- actually it's probably not ironic, just what you'd expect -- is that at that moment the children were having a moment of silence for the six year old DCPS student killed in a crosswalk on his way to school by a Takoma Park driver.