We Need to Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

But in the same vein, when a car nearly sideswipes me in a crosswalk, I’ve noticed that the driver is frequently furious—shouting, gesticulating, cursing—at me, whom he nearly ran over and who had the undisputed right of way. This is a dynamic particular to encounters with male drivers, who seem to grow all the more indignant the more completely they are in the wrong. I think the emotional reasoning, if you can call it that, is transitive: You make me feel bad; feeling bad makes me mad; ergo, you make me mad.