u/Carrots-1975

I’ve encountered a behavior multiple times this week that infuriates more than the left lane camper. I’m calling them impatient/entitled mergers. There’s a long line of cars on an on ramp that needs to merge with traffic on a highway, but some entitled asshole 8 cars back in the line decides he needs to go first and crosses the double line before the merge lane even begins and cuts off all the cars in front of them trying to merge. Wait your damn turn!

I had this happen to me twice yesterday in Atlanta (people drive insane there anyway) and the second time the asshole actually got mad and honked their horn when I went ahead and merged in front of them instead of letting them pass before I merged. Fuck all the way off please.

Edited to add: it’s wild the number of you assuming I was the only one in line to merge and was going too slow. My post literally states there was a long line in the merge lane. I had 3-4 people in front of me and the Asshole who merged over the double lines was at least 5 cars behind me. We hadn’t had a chance to get all the way up to speed yet. I can’t go faster than the 4 cars in front of me.

I’m fairly intelligent and very detail oriented about certain things. But my brain has categorized things for me into things I will notice and remember, and things I won’t. I seem to have no power over it either.

For example- makes and model of cars. I can be friends with someone for YEARS and not remember what kind of car they drive. My brain has just decided that information is irrelevant and refuses to store it. Other examples- faces and directions (as in how to get around the city I live in).

It’s not a memory issue- I’m a classically trained pianist and have multiple pieces memorized. I remember lyrics to songs forever. I’m just not very observant which drives me crazy.

I’m a single white woman, 51, who bought a house in a predominantly black neighborhood last year. I have thoroughly enjoyed living here. What I’ve really loved is the sense of community- I’ve been welcomed and everyone really seems to look out for one another on the block. I think white neighborhoods are so repressed- no one comes outside to mingle. But here, neighbors are outside all the time, listening to their music, yelling at one another from across the street just checking up on one another. My neighbor to my left always cuts my front lawn when he does his. My neighbor across the street brings my trash cans in for me after pickup.

The neighbor who cuts my grass is in his late 60’s, has had a stroke, and his wife has been in the hospital off and on the whole time I’ve been here. This last hospital stay has been over a month and I know he’s really lonely. He’s also a functional alcoholic, which I’m not judging just giving some background.

I wanted to be neighborly, so I made a lasagna for dinner and took him a plate. That’s when things went sideways- now he’s almost demanding things from me? Yesterday he told, didn’t ask, me to bring him some vodka (he’s out) and another plate of lasagna. I did but it ruffled my feathers a bit. I tried to brush it off- he’s obviously from the generation of men who’ve always had a wife to look after him and now he’s alone. But then he started in with the sexual comments about my body- about how I’m just his type. It has completely given me the ick and I feel like I can’t hang out on my front porch anymore because he’ll be out there.

How much of this is cultural? Like I’ve heard other neighbors be very frank with each other and with him and no one seems to get their feelings hurt. They say what they got to say and move on- which I really admire. I know I’m going to have to set him straight, which I’m perfectly comfortable doing, but I want to do it in such a way that we’re still neighborly. How do I straddle that line?