You don't see that everyday...or do you??

I've been in Boston for about four days now. I'm almost completely settled into my room and I'm ready for classes to start. Each day, so far, I've set out on a peregrination about the city. I've checked out South Boston, East Boston, Chinatown and all the area around Brighton (where I'm living). I've been traveling by foot, bus and subway because I am yet to acquire a bicycle. I'll be glad when I actually get the bike, since the closest grocery store I've found is 1.5 miles away (which is an awfully long way to walk if I'm carrying many groceries. I've found three bikes on craigslist that I'm going to look at today, so hopefully I'll return with one of them.

On my first day here I was walking down Commonwealth Ave. (yes, my new school is on the same street that my last school was on) when I saw an interesting incident. Comm ave is three lanes in each direction, for part of the time, and two lanes in other areas. I was approaching an area that merged three lanes into two when I saw two cars that appeared to be stuck. As I got closer I realized that I wasn't a witness to a physical crash, but more of an ego jam.

The man on my right was in a beat up, Oldsmobile, station wagon (probably mid 80s era), and the man on the left was in a very nice, new Mercedes. They had come to a junction in the merger where one of them was going to have to give a little bit, but neither of them had that desire to give. Their cars were inches apart so that neither car could go forward without hitting the other. The only way to resolve the jam was for one of them to put it in reverse. But that wasn't happening anytime soon!

As other cars are beginning to honk and line up for a good distance behind them, the man in the station wagon throws open his door and steps out (mind you, he's in the middle of the street with the now only open lane passing beside him. Now standing in front of his car, he throws his arms open wide open and yells in a very nice Boston accent (which I'm working on), "Move your f***ing car!!"

At this point I'm beginning to laugh a little because of how ridiculous the whole situation seems. The Benz isn't moving so the guys tries to squeeze in a little closer to the driver's side window, but because of the closeness of the cars he can't get right beside it. He screams the same thing again. (And I think I forgot to mention that the man from the station wagon left his door open the entire time).

I titled the post this way because I thought, at the time, that I must be witnessing a rare, extreme battle of the male ego fighting to not back down. But as I looked around and realized that I was basically the only one taking note of this seemingly strange occurrence, I thought, "Huh, maybe this isn't out of the ordinary at all in Boston." If it happens again in the near future, I'll know.

I went on with my business as the fight continued on into the 5th round. I don't know if there was a K.O. or the judges had to decide the winner. I had more important things to do--as I'm sure they did also, along with all the people backed up behind them.

Soon to come is another ego throw-down, so stay tuned.