{"id":83937,"date":"2015-03-24T15:57:58","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T19:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=83937"},"modified":"2015-03-24T16:53:19","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T20:53:19","slug":"strife-in-the-fast-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/24\/strife-in-the-fast-lane\/","title":{"rendered":"Strife in the Fast Lane"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"tucsonhighway\"<\/a>

Photo: Daniel Ramirez<\/p><\/div>\n

The other day, I was riding down a Tucson highway with my mother. We had been to the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store and now it was rush hour. Suddenly, a man in a white pickup accelerated, passed us on the right, and screamed, \u201cGET OUT OF THE FAST LANE, DUMBASS!\u201d<\/p>\n

After a moment of stunned silence, we both started to snicker.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dumbass<\/em> has always been one of my favorite insults. Not to use, just to savor as a word. In its combination of coarseness and babyishness, it is unusually silly. It\u2019s hard not to think of Beavis and Butt-Head\u2014who were never as menacing as parents seemed to think they were\u2014or boys on an elementary-school playground. Compound insults like this are the special province of kids. I\u2019ll still never get over the shock I felt when my brother\u2019s four-year-old friend, Doug, turned to his older sister and said very coolly, \u201cMary Jane, you\u2019re a fuckindamnshit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

When you think about it in a literal way, dumbass<\/em> doesn\u2019t even sound that insulting. Isn\u2019t a donkey, or a rear end, less objectionable when silenced? Of course, that\u2019s not what anyone means.<\/p>\n

In any case, it seemed a strange epithet to level at my dignified, silver-haired mother. Especially when we weren\u2019t going that slowly and everyone was mired in traffic. Indeed, after he\u2019d pulled ahead of us, the guy\u2014who had a shaved head and a vanity plate that said KARN<\/small>; he was probably in his thirties\u2014was unable to move any further. Surely frustrating. He looked back at us and saw us snickering. His face darkened with rage. \u201cYOU ARE ONE DUMBASS BITCH!\u201d he screamed, with real anger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We guffawed harder. We were thrilled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Later, when we got home, we admitted that the genuine rage we\u2019d seen in his eyes had been alarming, kind of. And there was my dad, watching a local news special about the rise in road-rage incidents.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, I was riding down a Tucson highway with my mother. We had been to the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store and now it was rush hour. 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