A New York moment in the northwest Chicago suburbs

I have a disease (well, at least one) which I call Auto Tourette’s. That’s to say, when I drive, I have this bad habit of uncontrollably swearing at all those motherfuckers out on the road these days.

It’s my way of coping with the idiots going 95 while reading the newspaper, sipping coffee and talking on the cell phone. Or my new personal favorite -- the dickheads who think that the green arrow light means any car in the turn lane has been given the divine right to turn regardless as if the arrow has long disappeared. I get flipped off by such cocksuckers on a regular basis for my mistaken belief that if I have a solid green light, that means I can go straight and no longer have to wait for them to cut in front of me.

For them I toot my horn. My potty mouth though typically is shouting behind closed windows in my own time out room that is my car.

Until last week.

I’m driving home from work down my usual creature of habit path, a back road less traveled, which means less likelihood to encounter morons. As it’s along a river and a nature preserve there is a good chance you might kill a raccoon or get your windshield pummeled by a dear, or worse yet, see someone in one of those neon bike outfits, but it’s worth the risk.

But to get to that road, just one house off a relatively busy residential intersection someone is putting up a new home. That’s meant construction trucks and other things to dodge, like in a video game, which apparently is what most people equate with real driving.

Anyway on this particular day that included a couple trucks, including one big ass one with the Shaq-sized wheel wells that apparently give blue collar types stiffies - and the piece de resistance, a metal plate on the street unevenly covering a hole in the pavement, a corner sticking up not like a store thumb, but like a knife just waiting to blow a tire.

As this is just one house past the corner, after I make my turn and see it, I don’t have much time or room to maneuver. So I go slow over to the other side of the street to avoid tire trouble.

Of course, another car is coming toward me but a good 100-220 feet away. I figure he sees me, will slow down and wait for me to pass, the courteous thing to do, given it was Easter time, the week Christ had Judas betray him so he could die for everyone but Patti Smith’s sins.

Well this jackass doesn’t slow down. Instead he pulls up until he has me blocked in and stops. I am still a good 20 feet or so from him and stopped, too. I roll down my window and shout, “What do you want me to do?”

He rolls down his window and points to his ears and laughs that he can’t hear me. So I say the same thing again, to the same effect, because morons, like monkeys and babies, are easily amused.

Fine, he wins whatever it is he thinks he won. I carefully back up -- with cars now behind me. When I drive by this mook in his minivan he just gives me this shit eating grin from under his baseball cap.

“What an asshole,” I say to him from behind sunglasses as I drive by.

Now I wish I would have sounded like Clint Eastwood or at least cop-like. Instead, my voice broke like a 17-year-old.

“Hey,” is all he said back, because apparently I offended his wife (or maybe it was a kidnap victim) sitting in the minivan passenger’s seat.

“Hey?” Like I was going to get out of the car and have a throw-down? Two middle aged white guys in minivans.

Come to think of it, that had comic possibilities.

But I drove home instead, sort of embarrassed by swearing.

I mean, the prick deserved it. But it’s too easy to swear and probably what he wanted and expected.

I should have said, “Sir, your behavior was most obnoxious and rude.” Or, in the spirit of the holiday, I could have wished him a happy Easter and said I’d be asking the Lord to forgive him.

I could have been wittier. I needed a scriptwriter.

Once that bit of neuroses passed, on came self-importance (a disease called Oprah-itis). I started to worry that the guy knew who I was or wrote my license down and would somehow get me in trouble at work.

What was I thinking? I’m not a TV star, or even a local politician or whomen passes for famous in the suburbs. No one reads anymore. Well, maybe bad drivers on the expressway, but not guys on side streets.